


Harry Potter and the Half-Arsed Tournament

by Marathon_Zack_140_6



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 4: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:33:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 34,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25108531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marathon_Zack_140_6/pseuds/Marathon_Zack_140_6
Summary: Harry Potter never wanted to compete in the tournament in the first place. And when his name mysteriously came out of the goblet, he still didn’t. So he did what any sensible wizard would do, and didn’t care. [Harry x Hermione - best friends to romantic]
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Harry Potter
Comments: 31
Kudos: 349





	1. The Morning After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After writing Goblet of Crack, I figured I needed a more serious rewrite of GoF, and had this idea from rereading GoF as I was writing that one. Title pretty much sums up the plot.

It was the morning after his name had come out of the Goblet of Fire.

Harry Potter lay in his bed staring straight up at the ceiling, wondering just how miserable his life around the castle was going to become for a while because of yet another event he had no control over. If the reaction of his dormmate the night before, who he'd thought was his best friend and would always stick by him, was any indication, he was going to be as hated as the year everyone had thought he was the heir of some long dead guy none of them could actually tell you anything about other than the fact he'd started the House that everyone now hated over a thousand years later and had had a few beliefs that were still prevalent to this day in various forms even among all the families who thought they were better than that. All simply because he, Harry, had a rare skill that said long dead dude and one psychopath had — proving his point that all the self-righteous families were just as bigoted as Slytherin, just for different things than blood.

The only person he now knew for sure would believe him was Hermione, who had always stuck by him, no matter what. Even during the previous year, when they'd fought over his new broomstick, their only real fight they’d had since becoming friends, she'd been more on his side than he himself had been, trying to make sure he was safe and didn't get brutally killed because he cared more about Quidditch than his own life. But it looked seriously doubtful at the moment that anyone else would believe him. And while most of Gryffindor was clearly going to support him in this stupid tournament, he'd rather they believe he hadn't entered himself at all than support him because they thought he had.

Finally deciding he'd stalled the inevitable long enough, Harry climbed out of bed, thankful to see that the redhead had already disappeared — he _really_ didn't feel like another fight at the moment. Dressing slowly, hoping that by the time he made it down to the Great Hall most of the crowds, and especially Ron, would have disappeared, he got ready to face the day. Finally, no longer capable of stalling any longer, he pushed open the door to their dorm and started down the stairs.

Where he nearly literally ran into his bushy-haired friend walking up them.

“Hi, Harry!” she said cheerfully. Holding out a napkin, she continued, “I was just bringing you breakfast. Figured you probably weren’t up for facing the Great Hall this morning. But since you’re already up, want to take it outside and go for a walk?”

Harry nodded, overwhelmingly grateful for her thoughtfulness. “That’d be great, thanks.”

They had just made it out into the courtyard and away from any prying ears when Harry couldn’t keep it in any longer.

“Do you believe I didn’t enter myself?”

Hermione stopped short, causing Harry to have to stop and turn back to look at her.

“Of course I believe you didn't enter yourself!” she exclaimed, sounding offended that he’d even have to ask. “One look at your face last night when Dumbledore called out your name told me that. Even before you said you didn’t put your name in, which would have been good enough for me on its own.”

Unable to help himself, Harry took the step to close the gap between him and Hermione, and threw his arms around her. Sure, he’d told himself Hermione was the one person who’d believe him no matter what, and he really _had_ believed that, but it was different to actually be able to hear it from her own mouth.

“Thank you,” he whispered softly, before finally letting her go.

“Of course, Harry. Of course,” replied Hermione softly, giving him a smile only she could.

They continued walking down towards the Black Lake, Hermione handing him the napkin full of breakfast so he could eat as they walked in companionable silence.

Once he had finished eating, Hermione asked concernedly, "So what are you going to do?”

She didn’t have to explain what she meant, they both knew.

Harry shrugged. “I have to compete, or else I’ll lose my magic, but they never said how hard I have to compete. So I guess I’ll just half-arse it. Do as little as I can to fulfill the obligations of competing, without actually trying. I don’t want to be part of this stupid tournament, never really did regardless of how I’m might have joked around about competing when we first heard of it…so why should I give it any more effort than my Divination homework, which I also don’t care about? Being me, they can’t really let me die, or put me in situations where I have to seriously try or I will die, so I guess I’ll just fail every task with as little effort as I can, and try to actually enjoy my year here at Hogwarts for once.”

“Think the professors will be okay with that?” asked Hermione.

“Nope. Not in the least,” answered Harry. “They are fully expecting me to try to win the thousand galleons and eternal glory, or whatever such nonsense they’re touting, but it’s not their decision. I don’t need the money or want the fame, and I certainly don’t want to be competing.”

They continued walking for a while, before Harry suddenly said, “Where were you last night? I never saw you in the common room while the party was going on.”

“There was a party?” asked Hermione, before shaking her head. “I mean, it’s the twins, so yeah, of course there would have been party. Sorry, it was all over by the time I got back. As soon as we were all dismissed, I went straight to the library to read up on the TriWizard Cup, and just lost track of time. I mean, I read a bunch about it after Dumbledore announced it when we first got here, but I hadn’t looked at it from the perspective of a participant yet. And I am sorry for not being there to talk with you at all last night."

“It’s fine, Hermione,” replied Harry, shaking his head. “And you’ve more than made up for it this morning. But I guess that means you missed Ron’s reaction to the news.”

“Well…not really,” said Hermione. “I mean, I missed whatever fight clearly occurred between you two last night, but he was in a right state after you joined the rest of the champions and before we were all dismissed and I headed off to the library, and he was clearly still not happy this morning when I saw him at breakfast before I headed back to the library. And speaking of which, it looks like it was a good thing I did, or I would have been bursting in on you, waking you up.”

“Probably not, I lay in bed for a long time feeling bad for myself, and then took as long as I possibly could getting ready to avoid having to face anyone. So you would have just found me being grumpy, not actually asleep,” replied Harry. “Though that might have been worse, for you at least.”

After second he added, “So Ron still doesn’t believe I didn’t enter myself?”

“Sorry,” replied Hermione, shaking her head. “But unfortunately it gets worse than that. He’ll of course never admit it, never has in the three years we’ve known him, but he’s also jealous of you. And before you start, I know you don’t want your fame, yada yada. But he feels like he’s overshadowed by all of his siblings, all while not being willing to actually try to do anything to stand out on his own, so he’s jealous of all the fame and attention you get without doing anything, and he conveniently forgets that most of it is negative, and that your life is a lot worse off because of it. Combine that with how much he hates being poor and would love to get his hands on a thousand galleons, and he’s not a happy camper right now. And add on believing that you’re lying to him, despite the fact you never have before, and he’s about ready to explode."

They continued on around the Black Lake, Harry not really having a response, or wanting to have to talk or even think about Ron at the moment. He felt betrayed, and it was easier to push it out of his mind entirely than to think about it.

After a while, Hermione broke the comfortable silence they’d lapsed into. “When we get back to the castle, I really think you should write to Sirius and tell him what happened. It will be much better if he finds out from you, than whatever the Daily Prophet writes about it. I was honestly surprised that it wasn’t in the Prophet this morning, but glad that it wasn’t because it means you still have the chance to tell him first.”

Harry opened his mouth to reply, but Hermione cut him off. “And if you’re worried that he’ll come bursting into Hogwarts or something foolhardy like that, then tell him that you’re going to do as little as possible, and he doesn’t have to worry about your safety. He’s not going to worry any less, because he’s your _godfather_ , it’s his _job_ to worry about you since your parents aren’t here to do it, but it will help _you_ worry a little less about what he’s going to do, and it might keep him from doing anything too rash.”

Defeated, Harry sighed, and replied, “Okay, fine. We’ll do it when we get back up to the castle.”

~HP~

As Harry predicted, the next few days were torture.

Hufflepuff was especially cold towards him for ’stealing’ their glory, and Slytherin was Slytherin. But even Ravenclaw had turned their backs on him as well, believing like everyone not named Hermione that Harry had entered himself. Of course, it didn’t help that Dumbledore hadn’t even tried telling the school that Harry hadn’t entered himself or had someone enter for him, that it looked like a plot by someone nefarious to try to maim, or seriously injure, or kill Harry and make it look like an accident — not that it probably would have actually helped any, but the gesture would have at least been nice. And despite supporting him, Harry wasn’t really sure Gryffindor was being any better than the rest of the castle, as they insisted on treating him like he was especially crafty and had found a way to enter himself, no matter how many times he told everyone he hadn’t done it.

To neither his nor Hermione’s surprise, Ron refused to sit anywhere near Harry for the next week, and therefore Hermione by extension, as she remained loyally by Harry’s side. But Ron did keep up a steady stream of glares and under his breath mutterings at Harry, which as best they could tell were centered around calling Harry a lying attention-whore who’d betrayed him.

But they knew Ron’s bitching would be minor compared to what the Prince of Cruelty could cook up, and unfortunately they had class with him second thing Monday morning, after suffering through the wrath of Hufflepuff in Herbology, including from the teacher herself.

Harry and Hermione had just arrived at Hagrid’s cottage when they heard Draco’s sneering voice drifting across the lawn towards them.

"Ah, look, boys, it's the champion. Got your autograph books? Better get a signature now, because I doubt he's going to be around much longer.... Half the Triwizard champions have died...how long d'you reckon you're going to last, Potter? Ten minutes into the first task's my bet.”

“Actually, only six champions ever lost their life in the several centuries the tournament was going steady,” replied Hermione, going into full lecture mode. She knew it would do no good in regards to actually teaching Draco anything, but some of the other students listening in might learn something,and it would take the attention off Harry. “And only four of those are actually well-known, but it’s from those four that the reputation of the tournament being highly deadly evolved from."

Draco’s retort was lost when Hagrid came lumbering around from the back of his cottage with the blast-ended skrewts, declaring they were going to take them on walks. As everyone reluctantly began trying to leash up the abominations, Hagrid called Harry over to him under the pretext of dealing with a larger than normal skrewt, despite the fact they were all clearly the same size. So Harry warily walked over, afraid of whether Hagrid was going to believe him or not when clearly no one else did, Hermione walking beside him with her hand resting comfortingly on his shoulder in support.

"So - yer competin', Harry. In the tournament. School champion,” said Hagrid as soon as everyone else was too busy to overhear.

“If by school champion, you mean the champion of some made up school that doesn’t exist, then sure,” replied Harry, still unsure of what Hagrid believed about him, but wanting to make sure he corrected the popular misconception that he was the, or even _a_ , Hogwarts Champion — that was Cedric Diggory, and Cedric Diggory alone.

“No idea who put yeh in fer it, Harry?” asked Hagrid, ignoring everything Harry had said.

“So you believe that I didn’t enter myself?” replied Harry with a sigh of relief, before answering, “And no. Dumbledore hasn’t told me anything.”

"Course I believe yeh," Hagrid grunted. "Yeh say it wasn' you, an' I believe yeh - an' Dumbledore believes yer, an' all."


	2. Rita's Article

The school continued hating Harry as the teachers didn’t even try to do anything about it or defend him, but Harry was actually doing okay.

Being hated by the school was kind of old hat for him by now, and with Hermione by his side constantly encouraging him and just generally being a comforting presence, he just focused on his classwork and learning all the magic he could, ignoring everyone who wasn’t a bushy-haired know-it-all bookworm who was hugging him far more frequently than he could ever remember her doing before. After growing up without any hugs for all of his life that he could remember, and then only getting the occasional hug from Hermione during the school year since he’d started Hogwarts (along with one or two from the twins’ mother since the first time he’d visited the Burrow), it felt really nice getting hugged — a warm, fluttery feeling in his stomach that he couldn’t quite explain. Anyway, she always smelled really nice when his nose was buried in her bushy hair.

However, that didn’t mean there weren’t still days that were highly annoying. Particularly Friday afternoons, when he had to suffer through an hour and a half of child abuse, and that was even before his name had come out of the Goblet. Now that his name had come out, it was whatever was one step beyond unbearable.

When he and Hermione arrived to the dungeon hallway outside Snape’s lair for their second Potions class since the goblet, they found Draco standing there with even more of a sneer than usual, looking particularly gleeful for some reason. He and all the other Slytherins had some kind of badges on their chests, which as Harry and Hermione got closer they could read said 'SUPPORT CEDRIC DIGGORY — THE REAL HOGWARTS CHAMPION!’ Draco pressed the badge, and it turned to 'POTTER STINKS!’

“Like them, Potter?” taunted Draco, as all the Slytherins around him laughed in unison, making them sound a little like programed robots, or the laugh track on a late-night ‘comedy’ tv show that thought it was funny but needed a laugh track because certainly no one watching was laughing.

“Cool. I’ll take ten and pay you back when I win the cup,” replied Harry boredly, turning towards Hermione and brushing an imaginary piece of lint off the front of her robes.

“But I thought you weren’t planning on trying to win,” smirked Hermione quietly so only Harry could hear her, reaching up to rest her hand over his, holding it against her. “Or do you just think you’re so good you’ll win without trying?”

Harry laughed lightly, really glad he still had someone to joke around with.

But before either of them had time to say anything more, and before Draco had any more time than to make a gagging sound at their physical closeness, Snape stepped out from inside his dungeon, and after giving Harry and Hermione a glare for standing so close to each other and looking happy in general, he ushered them all into his torture chamber.

But they had just settled in when Colin Creevey came knocking, because God knew it was a good idea to send a third year who should be in class himself to pull Harry away from Snape, instead of a teacher or tournament official coming themselves to do it. Though thinking back on it afterwards, Harry and Hermione agreed that it was probably because all of the adults were too scared of Snape to do it themselves, but could order a student to do it for them. But with much embarrassing (for Harry) discourse, Colin explained that Harry was needed not there, and after a completely unjustified outburst by Snape (since the fact Harry was needed elsewhere was in no way, form, or fashion Harry’s fault), Harry followed Colin out of the dungeon and upstairs.

He had barely been in the wand weighing classroom for two minutes when he was being pulled back out again, by a magenta-robed witch from the Daily Prophet. Soon shoved into a broom closet, Rita Skeeter (for that’s who it was, not that Harry had a clue _who_ that was) quickly introduced herself and talked over him for a couple minutes, before starting to ask him questions that she pretty much talked over his answers to, as well.

"So, Harry...what made you decide to enter the Triwizard Tournament?”

“I didn’t,” sighed Harry, having had this conversation far too many times already. “Someone else did, I have no clue who, and I really wished they hadn’t.”

"Come now, Harry, there's no need to be scared of getting into trouble. We all know you shouldn't really have entered at all. But don't worry about that. Our readers love a rebel.”

Harry just stared back at her indifferently, knowing nothing he said would make her change her opinion — he had two weeks of experience as proof.

"How do you feel about the tasks ahead? Excited? Nervous?”

“Indifferent,” replied Harry, in as bored sounding of a voice as he could manage, which was pretty darn bored.

Rita stared at him for a second in surprise, clearly taken aback by his answer, before quickly recovering and continuing on with her interrogation.

"Champions have died in the past, haven't they? Have you thought about that at all?”

“It’s only been six, only four of whom are actually known, and I haven’t really thought about it — and I only know that much because my friend is a walking library,” replied Harry, quoting what Hermione had told him as they’d walked around the lake that first morning, and what she’d later told Malfoy and everyone else listening before the first Care of Magical Creatures class after Harry’s name came out the goblet.

"Of course, you've looked death in the face before, haven't you? How would you say that's affected you?”

“Made me want to never have to do it agin, despite the fact it keeps happening every single year,” answered Harry with a roll of his eyes.

"Do you think that the trauma in your past might have made you keen to prove yourself? To live up to your name? Do you think that perhaps you were tempted to enter the Triwizard Tournament because of that?“

“I wish everyone would just forget my name for a while,” grumbled Harry, leaning back against the wall and banging his head a few times. It was certainly more pleasant than this conversation.

"Can you remember your parents at all?”

“Nope.” He certainly wasn’t about to tell her about how he could remember their murders every time he was attacked by a dementor.

"How do you think they'd feel if they knew you were competing in the Triwizard Tournament? Proud? Worried? Angry?”

“They’d be parents,” replied Harry with another roll of his eyes. “Obviously they’d be worried. It’s kind of in the job description.” He figured they’d also probably be proud of how he did in the tournament if he actually tried, but it would be far too easy for Rita to twist his words if he actually said they’d be proud.

Fortunately the interview was cut short a second later, as the door opened to produce Dumbledore, finally come to rescue Harry and take him back to the wand weighing.

When Ollivander finally got around to fingering Harry’s wand, Harry tossed it to him indifferently, not really caring how well his wand could perform, since it was clearly good enough for classes, and he had no intent of using it during any of the tasks. A thousand photos later, and they were finally released to go to supper, which Harry quickly hurried to to find Hermione. Not that he had any particular reason to need to see her or any particular thing to talk to her about, he’d just rather be with her than anywhere else he could be, and he was quite hungry as well.

* * *

The following day, Rita’s article appeared in the Daily Prophet.

Despite having a title that implied it was about the TriWizard Cup, it actually had almost nothing to do with the tournament, and instead was a completely made up story about an imaginary person that happened to also have the name Harry Potter and was apparently (also imaginarily?) competing in the same TriWizard Cup Harry and the three champions were. The only really interesting part about the whole article was its claim that this imaginary Harry fellow was in a serious relationship with Hermione, which Harry would have bristled at, had he not known that there was no way that could be true, since _he_ spent almost all of his waking hours with her and he’d never ran across this imaginary Harry dude, so there was no way imaginary-Harry could be dating Hermione or he would have seen him at some point. That, or there was also an imaginary-Hermione out there somewhere, who _was_ getting frisky with imaginary-Harry, but Harry was fine with that — good for imaginary-Harry and imaginary-Hermione, he wished them the best imaginary luck in their imaginary endeavors.

Of course, Slytherin thought it was the greatest article ever written in the history of mankind and went around the castle quoting it as often as they could, but what could one expect? Every time they would quote the article at him, Harry would just nod along and go ‘Uh-huh, uh-huh,’ not actually paying them any attention. After all, they were talking about someone who definitely wasn’t him, so why _should_ he pay them any attention?

The one bad thing about the article was that it seemed to have solidified Ron’s belief that Harry was loving every minute of this, and made the redhead nearly reach the level of animosity of the Boy Chief of Slythers himself. However, after a couple days, Harry noticed that Hermione seemed more pleased by this than otherwise, which surprised him, given how kindhearted she always was. So finally one day he stopped her in an empty secret passage on their way from the library back to Gryffindor Tower and asked her about it.

“Oh. Uh…” she stammered, blushing slightly. “Harry, please don’t hate me for this, and I never said it before since Ron was your first friend and meant so much to you — but he’s kind of a git. And by kind of, I mean he’s abusive — though that’s more to me than you — he’s jealous, lazy, close-minded, obsessed with your fame that you don’t even want, can’t just be a good friend, is too proud to ask for or even accept monetary help but demands I do his homework just because he doesn’t want to do it himself, and argues more than anyone I’ve ever met and over the stupidest things. I’ve always put up with him for your sake, but honestly, I’ve been relieved not to have to deal with him these past few weeks.

“And for _your_ sake, I do hope he comes around, I swear, but I really hope he actually changes this time around, because for my own sake, I’m not looking forward to having to put up with him again if he stays the same. And as for him treating you worse since the Daily Prophet came out, while I really _don’t_ like that you’re having to basically put up with a Slytherin in your own dorm, I’m also guiltily happy about it because it seems likely it’ll probably mean more Ron-free weeks for me. I’m a terrible person, aren’t I?”

By the end she was staring at the ground, unable to look Harry in the eye anymore out of guilt. Harry stepped forwards and wrapped his arms around her, hugging her to him tightly. He may not have known what to say, but if he’d learned anything from his bushy-haired best friend over the years, it was how to say everything you didn’t know how to actually say through a hug.

Before this entire debacle, Harry had been too close friends with Ron to ever be able to see him like Hermione obviously had, and ever since his former best friend had abandoned him, he’d completely pushed the boy out of his mind and refused to even think about him when he didn’t have to. But now that Hermione had laid it all out on the line, he could see that she had a point. He hadn’t had time while she was talking to think through every point she’d made, but several had certainly stuck out. Without a doubt the redhead was lazy when it came to homework, and certainly weaseled Hermione into doing most of it for him, and had suffered badly the previous year when the two of them weren’t on talking terms with Hermione after the Christmas Firebolt incident. Not that he himself was the best at homework, though he did at least do most of his on his own at Hermione’s insistent prodding, instead of making Hermione do half of it herself, and ever since it’d just been him and Hermione after the goblet, he’d found he really didn’t mind doing his homework, which made him wonder if some of his own laziness about homework hadn’t been influenced by Ron’s laziness. And speaking of the Firebolt, now that he thought about it, Ron certainly had acted towards Hermione a lot like his own relatives acted towards him, so she certainly might have a point about him being abusive, or at least acting like it some of the time. As for Ron being jealous of him, he remembered that this wasn’t the first time Hermione had made that claim, their walk around the Black Lake the morning after his name had come out of the goblet popping into the forefront of his mind.

Having had time to think all these things through, Harry softly whispered to her, “I could never hate you, and while I’d never thought about it before, you certainly aren’t wrong in saying he can be a git some of the time. And you do seem to have a better view of a lot of things than I do when we’re in the heat of the moment — a certain broomstick comes to mind real quickly. For which I apologize profusely for refusing to talk to you during that time, and just how I treated you in general.”

Hermione pulled back slightly from the tight hug they were still in, and Harry could see that she’d been silently crying into his shoulder.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “And I knew you were sorry for the whole Firebolt thing, and I also really do understand why you were so upset about it, and I definitely could have handled things better as well. But your apology means a lot to me. And I really _do_ hope he’ll change and you two can be friends again.”

Harry just smiled in reply, lightly brushing her hair.

But after several seconds he said, “Come on, it’s late. We need to get back to the common room before Snape or Filch wander by and try to throw us into Azkaban.”

They walked the rest of the way in companionable silence, Harry’s arm wrapped around Hermione’s shoulder, and Hermione’s arm around Harry’s waist.


	3. Here Be Dragons

The Saturday before the first task was a Hogsmeade weekend, which Harry and Hermione were excitedly looking forwards to. It was always fun to get out of the castle and visit town, but more than that, it gave them a chance to escape the castle's increasing intensity about the upcoming task.

The surprise of having his name come out of the Goblet was long gone for Harry, and by this point he was just boredly waiting on the first task to get there, so he could just half-arse it already and not have to think about the tournament again until the second task, which he figured probably wouldn't be until after Christmas. Hermione was of course doing her best by making sure to always be there for him, and had relaxed her strict study schedule a little to give him more of her time since he had no one else to hang out with anymore, but it was nice to finally have something real to do, something outside the castle grounds.

They walked down the long road into Hogsmeade, chatting and joking and laughing and generally having a good time. It was refreshing not to have anyone cheering, or taunting, or glaring, or ridiculing them, as everyone else heading into Hogsmeade was too busy with their own friends and plans to notice Harry and Hermione walking amongst them. When they got to the lone all-magical town of Britain, they spent several hours making all their normal rounds of the town's quaint shops, before finally ending up in the Three Broomsticks, relaxing and nursing a couple butterbeers and shooting the breeze. Several tables over from where they'd sat down, Hagrid and Mad-Eye were drinking together, and before the two professors left, they made their way over to where Harry and Hermione were sitting.

"All right, Harry, Hermione?" asked Hagrid.

"Just relaxing, enjoying the weekend," replied Harry, leaning back in his chair and taking another swig of his butterbeer to emphasize his point.

Hagrid then bent down between Harry and Hermione, and whispered so low that only they could hear it, "Harry, meet me tonight at midnight at me cabin. Wear your cloak."

Harry and Hermione both looked up at him in confusion as he straightened back up.

"Why?" asked Harry, not bothering to whisper, though with the constant noise of chattering all around them, it was highly unlikely anyone would overhear. "That's long after we're no longer allowed out of our common room."

"Sorry, Harry, can't tell ye," replied Hagrid, shaking his shaggy head.

"Then I can't come. Sorry, Hagrid, you're a great friend, but I'm not trying to sneak out of the castle in the middle of the night without knowing what for," replied Harry, shaking his own head. "I've gotten in trouble too many times before — I'm not doing that this year."

Hagrid stared down at Harry in surprise, that he wasn't willing to bend the rules anymore like he always had been. Mad-Eye quickly leaned over and whispered something into Hagrid's ear.

A second later, Hagrid bent back down between Harry and Hermione and whispered, "It has to do with th' first task."

"Sorry, still not interested," replied Harry when Hagrid had straightened back up again. "It's not worth the possibility of getting caught and receiving detention."

Now both Hagrid and Mad-Eye were staring at Harry in shock, though Hermione didn't know why Mad-Eye should be looking as upset as he was at Harry not wanting to find something out about the first task. Sure, it made sense that the ex-Auror would be worried about Harry's safety in the tournament, especially as he'd been the one to suggest that someone was targeting Harry, and would therefore want to give him some bit of a heads up where he could, but not actually look almost irritated when Harry refused to accept Hagrid's help.

So before either of them could try to persuade him any more, Harry continued, "Sorry, but it's not happening. I'm not wandering about the castle and grounds during the middle of the night to find out something about the first task." Then looking over at Hermione, he asked, "Want another butterbeer?", before standing up without waiting for an answer to go get them two more, though Hermione knew perfectly well that they both still had plenty in the ones they already had.

"I'm not coming either," said Hermione after several seconds, not even bothering to look up at the pair of teachers, her eyes instead following Harry as he walked across the pub and up to the bar.

There was an awkward silence (at least on Hagrid and Mad-Eye's part — Hermione was perfectly comfortable) for several more long seconds, before Mad-Eye finally said gruffly, "Well, be seeing you around, Miss Granger," and he and Hagrid finally left.

Returning with the butterbeers a minute later, Harry sat down and asked, "What was that all about?"

"I don't know," replied Hermione, shaking her head. "And why was Mad-Eye so keen on you finding out something about the first task? I mean, Hagrid I get, obviously, he wants you to win, and has never been able to keep a secret from you. But Mad-Eye's a real teacher. And while cheating's always been part of the tournament, and I can understand him wanting to try to protect you since he believes someone's trying to kill you, I'm surprised he'd be so blatant about it."

As they finished up their butterbeers, they continued discussing why Hagrid, and especially Mad-Eye, thought it so important that Harry find out whatever it was that Hagrid had wanted to show Harry, before eventually heading back up to the castle for supper, blissfully not caring about the first task.

~HP~

Monday morning, as Harry and Hermione were leaving the Great Hall for Herbology, Harry was stopped by Mad-Eye.

"Come with me, Potter," he growled.

"Professor, I'm supposed to be in Herbology in ten minutes," replied Harry, not wanting to be late, which he certainly would be if he had to go talk to Mad-Eye.

"Never mind that, Potter — Miss Granger can tell Professor Sprout where you are. Now in my office, please…."

Harry followed after the ex-auror, wondering why Mad-Eye needed to talk to him, and if it had anything to do with whatever he and Hagrid had been trying to show him Saturday night. Making it up to Mad-Eye's office they entered, and Harry found it full of highly interesting auror objects.

"Like my Dark Detectors, do you?" asked Mad-Eye, watching Harry look around.

"What did you need to speak to me about?" asked Harry politely, turning his full attention to Mad-Eye.

"Straight to the point — I like it," growled Mad-Eye. "The first task is dragons."

Harry's eyebrows rose slightly in surprise, but he tried to keep his face as calm and composed as he could. "Oh. Uh, thanks for telling me, professor. Now can I go to class?"

"Don't you want to think about how you're going to get past them?" asked Mad-Eye in surprise of his own.

"I'll, uh…I'll be thinking over it," lied Harry.

He didn't really want to tell any of the teachers that he wasn't planning on trying, because they clearly wouldn't approve of that even if it should have been their own suggestion from the very beginning if they really cared about his survival above all else, and it was going to be really hard to continue making Mad-Eye believe he cared if he had to talk to him about how he was going to get past a dragon he had no intention of getting past.

"If I can't think of anything on my own, I'll come back by this afternoon," he continued as he edged towards the door, praying Mad-Eye wouldn't stop him.

"Oh. Uh, right. Of course," replied Mad-Eye quickly recovering, but still looking surprised at Harry's reaction. "Go on now, and I'll be here if you and Miss Granger can't come up with anything."

Harry walked out of Mad-Eye's office, before sprinting down to the greenhouses as soon as the door was safely shut behind him.

"Everything okay, Mister Potter? Miss Granger said Professor Moody needed to talk to you," said Professor Sprout when he entered Greenhouse Three a few minutes later.

"Oh, yes, just some tournament business," replied Harry, before hurrying over to Hermione and her Flutterby Bush.

As they worked on pruning the quivering, nice looking, not too expensive shrubbery, Harry whispered, "Apparently Hagrid was going to show me some dragons we have to face tomorrow or something. That's what Mad-Eye needed to tell me, along with trying to discuss how I was planning on getting past it, but I escaped by telling him I wanted a chance to think on it alone. So now we just have to avoid him until the task tomorrow morning."

"Dragons!" exclaimed Hermione in an equal whisper. "That seems a bit dangerous even for seventh years, and certainly unpredictable and hard to control. I mean, they _did_ claim they were making this safer so no one would die this time around."

Harry shrugged. "Don't know. And 'get past dragons' is a bit vague of a task anyway, so I'm not exactly sure what the champions will actually have to do tomorrow, but I wasn't about to stick around and ask him."

With nothing else urgent to discuss about it at the moment, they stopped talking and focused on pruning their bush, knowing they would have plenty of time later to talk about everything Mad-Eye had said, and guess what the second task could possibly be.

As they walked from Herbology down to Hagrid's hut for Care of Magical Creatures an hour later, Harry asked, "Any chance I can skive off Divination this afternoon to pretend I'm researching for the task tomorrow?"

Of course, what he really meant was, 'Will _you_ let me skip class?', not 'Do you think none of the professors will complain if I skip class?', and they both knew it.

Hermione sighed. "Fine. But only if you actually work on your homework during that time. And only because I think Divination is a complete waste of time. Not that Care isn't this year either, with these stupid screwts," she finished with a grumble as they reached Hagrid's hut. "I love Hagrid, don't get me wrong, but he isn't a teacher."


	4. 1st Task

The following morning, the entire castle was in a state of great tension and excitement.

In fact, the only two people who didn’t seem to be anxious for the task that afternoon were Harry and Hermione. It didn’t take more than thirty minutes of everyone either wishing him luck or hissing things like, "We'll have a box of tissues ready, Potter” at him as he ate breakfast with Hermione for him to seriously start wishing the bloody thing was just over already so everyone could go back to doing whatever they did when they weren’t bothering him.

Except Hermione — she was more than welcome to bother him all she wanted for the rest of their lives.

But eventually the morning was finally over, and he and Hermione were eating lunch, when Professor McGonagall hurried over to tell him he had to leave for the first task. As he was about to stand up to follow their Head of House, Hermione grabbed his shoulder and leaned over and gave him a quick kiss on his cheek before letting him go, saying, “Good luck, Harry. You’ll do great!”

As Harry walked with Professor McGonagall down towards the Forbidden Forest, all he could think about was Hermione’s kiss. He vaguely heard McGonagall talking in the background about him not panicking and just trying his hardest and whatever else she was jabbering on about, but as he just kind of nodded along and gave all the right ‘Uh-huh’s and 'I’m fine's, his mind was still back in the Great Hall, thinking about Hermione’s kiss, and the fact it was the first kiss he could remember ever receiving. By the time they arrived at the tent Professor McGonagall was leading him to, he’d come to the definite conclusion that he wouldn’t mind receiving more from his bushy-haired best friend.

Once Harry was inside the tent, Bagman gathered the four champions to tell them about the task. It turned out that the champions had to steal a fake egg from a nest of real eggs, protected by the dragon who’d laid said real eggs — a highly stupid and unrealistic goal in Harry’s opinion. But far more interesting was the expressions on the three champions’ faces. Cedric looked completely shocked, like Harry knew he himself would have looked had this been the first time he’d heard about any of this and was actually trying to win. But Fleur and Krum both wore resigned, determined looks, clearly already knowing what was coming, at least to some extent. Harry briefly wondered how Fleur and Krum knew about the dragons and Cedric didn’t, and then briefly felt bad that he hadn’t told Cedric about them after Mad-Eye had told _him_ , before quickly remembering that he’d assumed Fleur and Krum wouldn’t know about the dragons either (even if that assumption was now clearly proven wrong), and therefore was in no way guilty for not telling Cedric.

After Bagman gave them their final instructions, he pulled Harry to the side and said, "Now...Harry...could I have a quick word? Outside?"

Harry shrugged. “Sure."

Once hidden in the trees, Bagman asked, "Feeling all right, Harry? Anything I can get you?”

Harry gave him a strange look. “I’m fine…” he replied slowly. He figured ‘ _A butterbeer would be nice_ ’ probably wasn’t what Bagman meant.

"Got a plan?" asked Bagman. "Because I don't mind sharing a few pointers, if you'd like them, you know. I mean, you _are_ the underdog here, Harry.... Anything I can do to help..."

Harry stared at him with thinly veiled disbelief for several seconds, before finally saying, “Uh, yeah. Got a plan.” _Just not do anything_.

Harry knew cheating was part of the tournament, and Mad-Eye clearly had no problem helping him, but it still seemed just a little wrong that one of the judges would offer to help him. Fortunately, at that second a whistle blew somewhere, drawing Bagman’s attention.

"Good lord, I've got to run!” he said in alarm before hurrying off, allowing Harry to head back towards the tent.

Harry meandered back into the tent, where he wished Cedric good luck on the older boy’s way out.

As Harry leaned back against one of the tentpoles with his eyes closed, twirling his wand idly between his fingers, he listened to the sounds of the crowd and Bagman's announcing. Cedric clearly wasn’t having a good time of it out there, having had to figure out in about five minutes how on earth he was supposed to take an egg from a nesting mother dragon with absolutely no preparation or warning or heads-up.

About forty-five minutes later according to Harry’s watch, Cedric had apparently finally figured out something that worked, as the crowd let out a deafening roar that could only mean the Hufflepuff had finally succeeded. Not that Harry thought that was all that bad, as he knew if it had been _him_ in there seriously trying to figure out what the hell to do, he’d have taken a whole lot longer than forty-five minutes — he’d probably still be standing there staring at the dragon in disbelief that that was what they had to do after forty-five minutes.

It became clearly obvious a few minutes later that Fleur and Krum really had known what was coming long enough to prepare for it, as it only took Fleur ten minutes to steal her egg, and Krum barely five minutes more than that.

But finally the whistle blew and it was his turn. Harry strolled out through the opening of the tent, and around the edge of the fence until he finally got to the gap that permitted him entrance into the enclosure. Entering the arena, Harry took a look around. Stands surrounded the cage, from which hundreds of faces looked down at him, eager to watch him be burnt to a crisp by a dragon, and making a lot of noise for him to get on with it already. Across the enclosure, at the very far side, crouched his dragon, guarding her clutch of eggs like any good mother would. She was staring at him hard, thrashing her spiked tail about warningly, daring him to do something stupid. But Harry had no intentions of doing any such thing.

Ever since Bagman had told them that their goal was to expropriate an egg, Harry had been contemplating the quickest way to make the judges give up any hope he was going to actually succeed, and take the dragon away for him. He had thought about a spell that could destroy from afar all the dragon’s eggs along with the one he was supposed to be getting — that should definitely whip the teachers into action — and he’d even thought up a few spells that might could work, but seeing the majestic creature sitting there across from him innocently protecting her babies, he didn’t have the heart to destroy any of them.

So instead, he sat down on the ground next to the entrance, summoned his book from where Hermione was holding it for him in the stands, and started to read.

_The Hobbit, or There and Back Again_ — he thought it seemed rather appropriate, given the task.

“Well, now, this _is_ an interesting tactic,” he heard Bagman’s amplified voice say to the crowd.

Ignoring it, and the crowd’s hushed whisperings, he chanced a glance up at Hermione, and saw her smirking back at him, her own book in her hand.

Harry had only been reading for about five minutes when he heard footsteps from behind him, and glanced up. There stood Professor McGonagall, looking confused.

“Um…Harry?” she asked, looking down at him.

“What is it?” asked Harry in return. “I’m busy competing here, can’t you see?”

“You’re sitting there reading a book,” replied McGonagall in confusion.

“Yep. That’s how I compete,” answered Harry. At McGonagall’s continued confused look, he expounded, “The rules say that I have to compete in the tournament. They don’t say _how_ I have to compete. And they certainly don’t say that I have to succeed. I walked into this enclosure to battle a dragon, therefore I am officially competing, and am at no risk of losing my magic when my plan to bore the dragon to sleep fails. So any time you guys want to call this quits and remove the dragon and let us all go home, be my guest. Until then —“

Here he pointedly held up his book for a second, before returning to reading it. Professor McGonagall stared at him for another long second, before hurrying away to talk with Dumbledore and the other judges. She certainly hadn’t wanted Harry to get hurt in any of these tasks, and she’d been very worried for him as she’d walked him down to the tent a little over an hour ago, but never in a million years would she have guessed that he simply wouldn’t try at all.

Ten minutes later, Harry heard footsteps behind him again. This time, it was Dumbledore, with the other four judges crowding around behind him.

“Come to call it quits?” he asked them before any of them could say anything.

“Harry,” replied Dumbledore in a tone that sounded like he was trying to explain something really very obvious to someone extremely dense. "If we did that, you would receive a score of zero on this task, which will make your chances of winning the TriWizard Cup extremely slim."

“Sounds good to me,” shrugged Harry. "I didn’t want in this tournament to begin with, I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in trying to win, and as long as I’ve competed enough not to lose my magic, I’m good to go.” After a second he added, “Or, I can just sit here and continue to read my book until you guys finally call this and remove that dragon over there.”

After a second, Dumbledore looked over at Mr Crouch. The Ministry Official shrugged.

“The rules only say that those people whose names come out of the Goblet of Fire have to compete in the tournament, not that they have to actually try to win. And as Mister Potter _has_ technically faced his dragon, he has competed in this task, and is therefore safe from losing his magic.”

Dumbledore turned back to Harry. “Are you absolutely sure? I mean, if this is just about not knowing what to do —“

“No, professor. It has absolutely nothing to do with whether I could or could not get the egg. I don’t want to compete, and I am absolutely sure I want you to end this task.”

“If you’re sure…” said Dumbledore hesitantly, before finally turning back to Bagman. “Announce that it’s over, and send the dragon keepers in to take the dragon away.”

By the time Bagman had announced that the first task was over, and Harry had been led over to the tent, Hermione was already there waiting for him, and threw her arms around him tightly. Harry wasn’t entirely sure why, as he had clearly never been in any danger, but he wasn’t about to refuse a Hermione Hug, regardless of why it was given.

Once the dragon and her eggs had been removed (except the golden one, which was delivered to Harry), the five judges each gave Harry a score of zero, and Dumbledore dismissed the crowds. Bagman, meanwhile, gathered the four champions (plus Hermione, who was hanging onto Harry’s arm like a very large, bushy-haired leech), to give them a few last minute instructions. Apparently, their eggs held some top secret clue as to what the second task was, that they would be competing in on February twenty-fourth.

Exiting the tent a few minutes later, Harry and Hermione found Ron standing there waiting for them. 

“What the hell were you doing out there!?” shouted the redhead as soon as he saw Harry.

_So much for thinking he’d really come to his senses after watching the three champions_ , Hermione thought to herself. _And sitting next to him in the stands, as he gasped about how whoever put Harry’s name in the goblet really had it out for Harry after the first three, I'd really thought he might have actually sincerely started believing Harry’s repeated insistence that he hadn’t entered himself_.

“Um, reading?” replied Harry. Even from way up in the stands, he would have thought that was fairly obvious.

“You didn’t do anything! You got a score of zero! How are you going to win with _that_!?!”

“I’m not,” replied Harry calmly. “I have no intent of winning this tournament. I didn’t want in it in the first place, why would I be trying to win it?”

Before Ron could retort anything stupid about Harry having a chance to win a thousand galleons and eternal fame and not taking it, Hermione interrupted, “What was all that you were going on about in the stands? About how you reckoned whoever put Harry’s name in the goblet was trying to do Harry in? What happened to that? I mean, surely you can’t think that just because Harry opted out of actually battling his dragon, that it means he wouldn’t have still been in the exact same amount of danger that the three champions were, _had_ he tried to get his egg.”

That shut Ron up in a hurry.

Hermione wasn’t specifically trying to get Harry and Ron back to being friends again, but she did want Ron to at least apologize for once, even if it was forced and insincere. What Harry did with that, or how much he believed Ron, was up to him.

“Oh. Uh…” Ron stuttered, his face going red to match his hair, before finally mumbling, “I shouldn’t’ve said you entered yourself.”

Harry stared at his former friend hard for a second, before saying coldly, “Took you long enough. But did you _really_ start to believe that I didn’t enter myself, or did you simply realize that you didn’t want to be in my place anymore? That now that you’ve seen for real how dangerous this tournament is, in hindsight you can say that of course I wouldn’t have entered myself, since _you_ wouldn’t have entered yourself had you known this is what it was really going to be like?”

Ron stared at Harry, before resuming the red color that had just started fading away.

“How dare you!” he shouted. “I come over here and apologize, and that’s how you treat me?!”

And with that he stormed off, leaving Harry alone with Hermione once more.

Harry looked over at Hermione. “Sorry. That wasn’t the nicest of me. I might have been more willing to forgive him if he’d admitted on his own that he believed I didn’t put my name in the goblet, and had actually apologized for calling me a liar, but he didn’t. And after trying to turn this all back on me after you literally had to drag his half-arsed apology out of him, I’m having a hard time believing the sincerity of any of it in the first place.”

Hermione wrapped her arms around him fully and hugged him tight. “You won’t hear me complaining. I still haven’t forgotten that he never apologized for saying Crookshanks ate Scabbers, or even for how he treated me after I turned your Firebolt in. Forgiven him, sure — but not forgotten."

They remained standing there a second longer, before Harry said, “We should probably head back up to the tower. I imagine the twins will want to celebrate.”

Hermione smiled, before grabbing his hand and twining her fingers with his, setting off towards the castle together. But they hadn’t made it far along the edge of the woods when Rita Skeeter jumped out from behind a clump of trees, Quick-Quotes Quill poised for action.

“Harry! My dear!” she exclaimed, beaming at them. “That was a rather unique approach to the first task, I must say. Care to give me a quick word? Were you scared of the dragon? Could you not come up with any way to try to get your egg? How do you feel about your chances in the tournament now?"

Harry looked at the acid-green robed woman for a second, weighing his options, before finally deciding to answer her even though he knew she’d twist his words, since she’d just make up his words otherwise.

“I didn’t enter myself, and I don’t want to be in this tournament at all, so I’m just doing the least I can to technically still be competing and therefore not lose my magic. I certainly wasn’t scared of the dragon from over where I was, it was all the way on the other side of the enclosure, and as long as I didn’t get anywhere near her eggs, I knew she wouldn’t try to hurt me. And as for my chances in the tournament, I have no interest in winning to begin with, so I really don’t care. But with zero points, yeah, I’d say my chances are pretty darn low. Now good-bye, we have a party to be attending.”

And with that he turned and walked away, pulling Hermione along beside him.


	5. Last Minute Dates

Fourteen days before Christmas, Professor McGonagall finally decided it was late enough to inform them all about an important social gathering to be held on Christmas evening.

The Yule Ball.

“So that’s why they told us all to get dress robes,” whispered Hermione into Harry’s ear as Professor McGonagall went on about how she expected their standards of behavior to remain impeccable, despite the fact that the _actual_ general standard of behavior around Hogwarts, at least from a student's perspective, was really quite abysmal given the likes of Draco, the entire Slytherin House in general, and the fact you were more likely to see half a dozen curses in the hallways walking between classes or from your common room to the Great Hall, than you were to see none.

But the next second the bell rung, and everyone began packing up their belongings and scampering out of the classroom to lunch.

Unfortunately, just as Harry had swung his backpack over his shoulder, Professor McGonagall called out over the noise, "Potter — a word, if you please.”

Knowing it didn’t really matter if he pleased or not, Harry looked over at Hermione and gave her a sigh, and she leaned over and said quietly, “I’ll be waiting just outside.”

Harry made his way up to McGonagall’s desk, wondering why she needed to speak with him.

Once everyone was gone and the door was closed behind Hermione, the last person to leave, Professor McGonagall said, "Potter, the champions and their partners —“

“What do you mean, partners?” asked Harry quickly in confusion.

He knew she had said something about being able to invite third years to come with you so that they would be able to attend, which seemed to him kind of silly not to just invite them outright if they were all allowed to come anyway, but he was pretty sure she hadn’t said anything about being forced to bring a date to this thing. At least, that’s what he _assumed_ she meant by ‘partner’.

Professor McGonagall looked at him suspiciously, like she thought he was doing a very poor job of trying to be funny.

“What?” asked Harry again, wondering why she was looking at him like that.

"Your partners for the Yule Ball, Potter," she replied coldly. "Your dance partners.”

“Ha!” burst out Harry, unable to help but laugh at the sheer ludicrousness of the suggestion. _Him_ , dance? That was a riot. Like the Dursleys had taught him how to dance — and he was pretty sure what the twins had taught him over the summer would _not_ be acceptable at a formal ball. “That’s not happening.”

“Oh, yes it will,” growled Professor McGonagall irritably. "That's what I'm telling you. The champions and their partners open the ball with the first dance."

“I’m not interested in dating,” replied Harry firmly. He was even less interested in dancing, and even less interested than that in opening the dance in front of everyone, but she seemed irrationally obsessed with the idea of him making a fool out of himself in front of everyone, so he figured that wasn’t the best way to go about trying to convince her this was a terrible idea, worse than letting Snape be within a hundred meters of children — or honestly, people in general.

"You are a Hogwarts champion, and you will do what is expected of you as a representative of the school. So make sure you get yourself a partner, Potter,” insisted Professor McGonagall firmly, clearing ignoring what he’d just said.

“I’m _not_ a Hogwarts champion, I was thrown into this thing illegally, against my will, and I _still_ don’t want to be a part of this stupid tournament,” Harry reminded her.

"You heard me, Potter," said Professor McGonagall in a very final sort of way.

Sighing, and using all his self-control not to roll his eyes, Harry turned and walked out of the classroom, nearly forgetting that Hermione had agreed to wait on him until he ran into her.

Holding him steady with her hands so he didn’t fall, Hermione took one look at his face and knew something was wrong. “You didn’t get in trouble, did you? You haven’t done anything wrong, and your homework’s been exemplary!”

“No, no,” Harry waved her off, as they turned and started walking down towards the Great Hall. “I didn’t do anything wrong or anything like that.”

Harry lapsed into silence, but Hermione could tell he was thinking hard about something, and so didn’t push him. As for Harry, he was thinking hard about what he’d been ordered to do. The Yule Ball had sounded almost interesting at the very beginning, something like a slightly larger, longer version of the Christmas Feast they had every year, but when she’d mentioned that dress robes had to be worn, it’d started sounding a little too fancy and stuffy for his tastes, and the whole only fourth years (or third years — ish) and above thing just sounded weird. And now that he was expected to have a date and dance in front of the entire school while not having the slightest clue how to dance, it sounded almost as bad as a Potions lesson when Snape was particularly vindictive towards him for whatever reason the overgrown bat hated him that week. All in all, he was quickly coming to the conclusion that he had no desire whatsoever to attend.

They were just walking down the final secret passage that would pop them out at the top of the Grand Staircase, when Harry suddenly reached out and pulled Hermione to a stop. She looked back at him expectantly.

“Hermione, you’re our TriWizard expert. Will I lose my magic if I simply don’t go to the Yule Ball at all?”

Hermione looked at him in surprise for a second, not having expected that question, before thinking for a second and then shaking her head and replying, “No. I have seen the Ball mentioned in a few of the books I’ve read, not sure enough to be considered ’traditional’ like Professor McGonagall said at the end of class, but either way, traditional or occasionally occurring, it’s not a task. It’s not part of competing, and the rules only say you’re bound to compete. So no. You don’t have to attend. Why?”

“Professor McGonagall held me back to tell me I had to have a date to open the dance with. Or, at least, that’s the short version of it. It took her a lot longer to get there than that. But I don’t dance, and I’m not interested in dating at this point in my life. If you’d just told me that it was part of the tournament, and I’d lose my magic if I didn’t go, I’d obviously beg you to go with me since you’re the only person I know who I would want to go to anything like that with, but since you said I don’t have to go, I really don’t want to go.”

Hermione blushed when Harry said he’d ask _her_ if he had to go, and felt a strange, warm, fluttery feeling in her stomach, but quickly pushed that to the side. This was about Harry, not her.

“Then don’t go. And if any of them complain about it afterwards, I’ll defend your choice. You don’t want to be a champion, and I doubt they would get all worked up if any of the other non-champion students didn’t attend, so you shouldn’t have to attend either, if you don’t want to.”

“Thanks, Hermione,” replied Harry, quickly hugging her.

He started to pull back, but she quickly wrapped her arms around him and hugged him to her even tighter. For some strange reason, the warm fluttery feelings in her stomach got warmer and flutterier when he hugged her. Anyway, she had some really quick thinking of her own to do, and she didn’t want him to start walking towards the Great Hall again while she was trying to think.

Several long seconds later, she finally released him, and took a step back so she could look at him fully. “I really do like my dress robes, though, so if I’m not going to be wearing them at the Yule Ball, you have to give me somewhere I can wear them that night instead.”

Harry looked at her in confusion for a second, trying to figure out what she was saying, before it suddenly clicked and he exclaimed, “Hermione! You don’t have to not go just because I don’t want to go!”

“What would be the fun of going if you weren’t there?” shrugged Hermione. “Anyway, you’re not the only one who doesn’t really want to go to this thing to begin with. I hadn’t really thought about it much until you said you didn’t want to go, but it got me thinking and this whole Yule Ball thing doesn’t really sound up my alley either. I think the two of us can come up with something better to do that night, and anyway, we’ll still have the whole day to enjoy the normal Christmas fun of the castle.”

“If you’re sure…” replied Harry slowly, clearly questioning her.

“Absolutely!” said Hermione, throwing her arms around him again in another quick hug. “Just remember, wherever you take me instead, I have to still be able to wear my fancy dress robes. You can just wear your normal ones, though, of course,” she finished hurriedly, knowing Harry wasn’t one for dressing up.

~HP~

Despite Hermione’s playful warning a few minutes later as they’d finished their walk down to the Great Hall, Harry wasn’t inundated by requests from girls to go to the Yule Ball with him.

If he’d thought about, Harry probably would have thought he just wasn’t as popular as Hermione thought he was, but in reality, it probably had more to do with the fact that he already had a girl who was rarely more than two feet from his side, and had been ever since his name had first come out of the goblet. Rita’s tall tale that Harry and Hermione were dating also probably had an impact on at least a few of the girls who might have considered asking him, which especially when combined with the fact they were almost always together, made it sure look to the casual observer like they were an item, madly deeply in love from the moment Harry had saved her from the mountain troll two months into their first year. But regardless of the why, no one asked Harry to go to the Ball with them, saving Harry from having to turn anyone down.

And Hermione didn’t receive any requests either, until the evening after the last day of classes. Harry and Hermione had just returned to Gryffindor Tower from the library, finishing up the Christmas break homework their teachers had given them, when they saw Ron sitting ashen-faced in the corner _they_ normally hung out in, Ginny sitting with him clearly consoling him about something. With Ron still not having spoken to them since he’d stormed away after the first task, they decided it best to take the couch in front of the fireplace, so as not to risk getting lashed out at. From what they’d seen, Ron seemed particularly volatile these days, prone to lashing out at anyone who appeared to already have found someone to go to the Yule Ball with, making Harry and Hermione fairly confident in assuming he hadn’t found anyone who’d go with him yet.

They had been quietly reading the books they’d borrowed from the library when Madam Pince had kicked them out for it being too late, when suddenly a shadow loomed over them, a figure blocking the light from the fire. Looking up, they found Ron staring down at them. Or specifically, staring down at Hermione.

“Ginny’s right. _You’re_ a girl, Hermione,” said the redhead without preamble.

“Congratulations, Ron. You finally figured it out,” replied Hermione boredly, returning to her book. "I mean, everyone else started realizing it at least a year ago when my boobs finally started coming in, but better late than never, I guess."

"Well — _you_ can come with me to the Yule Ball!” exclaimed Ron, completely ignoring everything Hermione had said.

“Sorry, can’t,” replied Hermione, not bothering to look up again.

If she had been going, she obviously would have been going with Harry, not the guy whose insults had nearly led to her getting killed by a troll first year, refused to talk to her for nearly a month and a half after she’d tried protecting Harry from a potentially deadly broomstick and had never apologized for it, when of course he wasn’t blaming her cat, and by extension _her_ , for killing his rat, something else he had never apologized for, and just generally arguing with her more often than he wasn’t. But even though she wasn’t going to the Ball with Harry, she still couldn’t go with Ron, even ignoring all the reasons she wouldn’t go with him. She did after all still have commitments with Harry that evening, even if they weren’t the Ball.

"Oh come on,” said Ron impatiently. "I need a partner — I'll look really stupid if I haven't got one, everyone else has….”

“How many girls have you asked?” asked Hermione, still reading her book and really not wanting to be involved in this conversation, but also figuring she knew the answer and could make a point.

“Uh…one,” mumbled Ron, turning a nice shade of red even though neither Harry nor Hermione were looking at him to notice it. “But you’re right here, so you can go with me.”

“Already told you I can’t,” said Hermione boredly, flipping the page of her book.

"Okay, okay, I know you're a girl,” Ron replied patronizingly. "That do? Will you come now?”

“Nothing’s changed in the ten seconds since I last answered.”

“Then who are you going with?” demanded Ron harshly, getting fed up with Hermione not doing what he wanted her to.

“That’s my own business,” replied Hermione calmly.

“I don’t think you’re going with anyone!” shouted Ron — after all, Ginny had just told him that he should ask Hermione, and then she’d swoop in behind and offer to go with Harry.

“Maybe I’m not. Or maybe I am, and I just don’t want to tell you because you’ll make fun of me,” replied Hermione, looking up and staring him straight in the eye, daring him to insist she wasn’t going with anyone. Sure, it was true, she _wasn’t_ going with anyone since she wasn’t going at all, but Ron didn’t know that, or need to.

“Right," huffed Ron, looking extremely put out. "This is just getting stupid! Hermione, you’re coming with me, and Harry, you’re going with Ginny!"

“The lady just told you three times she can’t go with you,” said Harry sternly, speaking for the first time since Ron had interrupted their reading, and looking up to glare at his late friend. “Leave her alone, and quit asking her."

“Oh yeah?! And what are _you_ going to do about it?!”

This,” replied Harry calmly, handing Hermione his book to hold for him. Then he stood up, and before Ron could even begin to comprehend what was happening, Harry had reared back and smote him right in the jaw, sending him sprawling undignifiedly to the floor.

Looking back down at Hermione, Harry casually said, “I think I’m going to turn in for the night. See you in the morning,” and grabbed his bag and walked over to the boys' staircase, disappearing up them.

As Ron stared after him from his spot on the floor, and Ginny did likewise from where she was still hiding in the corner watching the whole scene unfold so she could swoop in and ask Harry as soon as Hermione agreed to go with Ron, Hermione placed her and Harry’s books into her backpack and stood up, walking over to her own staircase and heading to bed herself, never saying a word to the redheaded pair.


	6. Christmas

The end of the term was over, and Christmas break freedom was finally here.

Completely caught up on their homework, Harry and Hermione had nothing but free time, though Hermione did prefer to spend a little of it in the library each day learning beyond what the scope of their classes covered. And her desire to learn and become better was so infectious, that even Harry enjoyed the couple of hours each day they spent learning new magic.

Despite still not talking to them, Ron kept springing, "Hermione — who are you going to the ball with?” on her every chance he saw them, much to everyone’s annoyance. Hermione always replied with a bored, “Not telling you”, but it never seemed to discourage the redhead, who would always come back and ask it again the next time he saw them. Harry had fortunately avoided this question entirely, except the time Hagrid had asked him during the last Care class of the year who he was taking to the Ball, where he’d just shrugged and said, “Haven’t really looked."

But overall, they were fairly easily able to avoid any conversations about the upcoming Ball, and risk revealing the fact they weren’t attending. They already knew from Professor McGonagall’s conversation with Harry that had started the whole thing that none of the teachers would approve, and if a single other student found out Harry wasn’t attending, the entire castle would know within a few hours, and the teachers would certainly find out as well. And even if they somehow didn’t, Harry and Hermione knew they would be taunted, ridiculed, and peer pressured by a majority of the castle for not wanting to attend. They knew this would happen after the Yule Ball anyway when they didn’t show up, but no reason to get it started any earlier than it had to.

On Christmas Eve, Harry tracked down the twins to ask them a question he really needed answered for the next day. Hermione had given him the task of creating their own little two person Christmas dinner, and for that he needed food. Which meant he needed the kitchens, and the best source of information for where the kitchens might be located and how one might go about getting food from there, was the twins.

Finding them plotting the demise of the world, or else working on their next joke shop item, one of the two, Harry asked, “How do you get in the kitchens?”

“Three meals a day not enough?” joked George.

“The great champion have to build up strength for the second task, in case he has to spend _thirty_ minutes reading this time?” continued Fred with a smirk.

Harry just rolled his eyes at them. “Funny. But seriously, you guys do it all the time, and I really need to know.”

“It’s easy,” answered Fred. “The entrance is a concealed door behind a painting of a bowl of fruit. Just tickle the pear, and it giggles and turns into a handle.”

“Just go down the staircase to the side of the Great Staircase. It leads down to the Hufflepuff common room as well, but before you get there you’ll be in broad corridor with food paintings,” continued George.

“And speaking of reading, we’re of the belief that Helga Hufflepuff was actually a hobbit, since it looks a lot like Bilbo’s cozy hobbit-hole down there,” added Fred.

“Thanks guys,” said Harry appreciatively, before hurrying down to where they’d instructed.

Arriving a few minutes later, he tickled the pear, and it squirmed, chuckled, and suddenly turned into a large green door handle. Opening it, he stepped through and found himself in what was practically a replica of the Great Hall above, just with mounds of glittering brass pots and pans heaped around the walls, and a great brick fireplace at the far end from where he stood.

But he only had a second to take all this in, as he was nearly immediately collided into by something small, which proceeded to hug his legs tightly.

“Harry Potter, sir! Master Harry!”

“Dobby!? What are you doing here?!”

The house elf he’d rescued from the Malfoys a year and a half earlier was certainly the last person he’d ever expected to meet in the Hogwarts kitchens. According to what Winky had told them at the Quidditch World Cup, Dobby was off having fun somewhere, and unable to find work.

Dobby spent the next several minutes telling Harry everything he’d been doing since Harry had freed him, with Harry asking questions along the way. But finally Dobby finished his tale, and asked, “But what is Harry Potter doing down in the kitchens, sir?”

“Well, I was hoping to find out how to get some food for a bit of a picnic,” replied Harry. “Not for right now, but to come get later."

“Does Harry Potter know where he wants to have this picnic?” squeaked Dobby. “Dobby can deliver the food to the location right before Harry shows up, sir!”

“Really? You can do that?” exclaimed Harry. “That’d be great, Dobby! Though now that it comes to that, do you or any of the house elves have any suggestions? It’s going to be tomorrow night, just Hermione and I instead of the Yule Ball, and it’d be best if it was somewhere slightly nice, since she wants to wear her dress robes, but not so fancy I’ll feel awkward just wearing my regular ones."

"Dobby knows the perfect place, sir!” squeaked Dobby happily. "It is known by us as the Come and Go Room, sir, or else as the Room of Requirement!”

“What’s that?” asked Harry. “I’ve never heard of it before.”

Dobby soon explained all about the room, and how to make it appear. It sounded absolutely perfect to Harry.

“Just make sure to think ‘ _Harry Potter needs a place for a date_ ’ as you walk past it, and it’ll all be ready for you,” squeaked Dobby as Harry was preparing to leave several minutes later.

Harry thanked Dobby yet again, before taking the snacks the other house elves offered him as a parting gift, and left the kitchens. Now to tell Hermione he had her a place for Christmas dinner.

* * *

Christmas morning, Harry woke early.

Everyone else in his dorm room was still asleep, as the light hadn’t even begun peeping up over the snowy horizon. He quickly got dressed in the dark, like every school-day morning since he’d started spending all his time with Hermione, and grabbed his presents to take down to the common room to open with Hermione. Fortunately, they were all in a cute little basket he could easily carry downstairs with him.

Maybe Crookshanks would like the basket to sleep in after all the presents were out. Well, he was a kneazle, so he’d probably be happy to sleep in it even with all the presents still in it, but Harry knew _he_ wouldn’t be happy with that option, as it would mean he couldn’t open any of his presents without risking getting scratched by Hermione’s grumpy, adorable, orange demon of fluff with toe beans.

Making it downstairs, he found Hermione already sitting on the couch in front of the fire waiting on him, dressed in a thin muggle t-shirt and jeans. As soon as she saw him she popped up and sprinted over to throw her arms around him, practically squealing, “Merry Christmas, Harry!”

“Merry Christmas, Hermione,” replied Harry, hugging her back tightly. “Been here long?”

“Maybe fifteen minutes,” replied Hermione, letting him go. “Crookshanks is lurking about somewhere — he’s pissed at me at the moment for tying a pink bow in his hair.”

They walked back over and sat on the couch together, opening their presents.

The best by far were Hermione's books on Quidditch and advanced Defensive spells, though Sirius’s knife that could cut through anything was a close second. Hagrid had sent him a box of sweets that Harry and Hermione delved into immediately, and the twins’ mother had sent him another sweater and box of treats, making Harry wonder if she even knew that Ron was no longer friends with him. And last and certainly leastly, his relatives had sent him a single square of tissue, too small for even a mouse.

Having finished opening their presents, Hermione grabbed her robes and they headed out to take a walk around the castle, it still being far too early for the Great Hall to be open for breakfast. Snow covered the ground, turning Hogwarts into a winter wonderland. They hiked all the way around the Black Lake, enjoying the stillness and quiet of the early morning, until finally making it back around to the castle side of the lake, they headed in for breakfast, having worked up quite the appetite by that point.

They spent most the day just hanging out, having a snowball fight with the twins in the afternoon. An hour and a half before the Yule Ball was supposed to start, they left the hubbub of the Gryffindor common room, and wandered the empty halls until they found themselves at the library. Even though it was obviously closed, the door still swung open with ease, just as it had the night exactly three years before when Harry had first used his invisibility cloak to sneak into the restricted section.

Finding a comfy bench in the back, they lit the surrounding torches so they would have light to read by, and settled in to give the rest of the castle time to all disappear down to the Great Hall. Harry sat on one end, as Hermione lay on her back across the bench, with her head in Harry’s lap. Harry occasionally glanced at his watch to check the time, but otherwise they just sat and laid there and read, Harry idly stroking Hermione’s bushy mane.

Thirty minutes after eight, Harry finally said, “It should be late enough that there can’t be any stragglers left. Ready to go eat?”

“Starving,” replied Hermione. “Just let me throw on my dress robes.” Standing up and grabbing her backpack, she added, “Stay over here and don’t look. I don’t want you to see it until I have it on and am ready.”

She disappeared behind the nearest bookshelf, and Harry went back to reading.

A minute later he heard her call out, “Okay, coming out,” and he looked up.

Hermione stepped out from behind the bookshelf, and Harry’s eyes widened. Her robes were periwinkle-blue and slightly floaty, and she held herself more regally than normal as she walked over to him. She had also twisted her mane of bushy hair into a complicated knot on the back of her head, exposing her neck and shoulders for the first time Harry could ever remember. And not that she wasn’t always in his opinion, but she was the absolute vision of beauty.

“Like?”

“You look stunning,” whispered Harry in awe.

Hermione blushed slightly, feeling yet again the warm fluttery feeling she seemed to sometimes be getting around him, especially when he was being particularly complimentary or particularly close, physically.

“Thanks,” she replied with a shy smile. “Now where are you taking me?”

Leaving their bags in the library since there wouldn’t be anyone around to steal them, Harry led them up to the seventh floor, to where Dobby had instructed him. Coming upon the blank wall across from the balleting trolls, Harry told Hermione to wait a second, before pacing back and forth in front of the wall three times, concentrating on, ' _I need a place for a date...I need a place for a date...I need a place for a date_ ’.

After the third pass, he opened his eyes to find a highly polished door with brass handle.

“After you, m’lady,” he said with a half bow, opening the door for Hermione to pass through.

Following her inside, he found a cozy room that looked somewhat like a miniaturized version of the Gryffindor common room, with a roaring fireplace set in the far wall. Except instead of couches and desks and chairs, there was a single table in the middle of the room with two chairs set around it, with an elegant picnic basket sitting in the middle.

“Wow! This looks amazing,” said Hermione in awe as she took it all in. “What is this place?”

“It’s called the Room of Requirement,” replied Harry. “And it sounds like it’s not particularly well known amongst the students, but it is known some, and the house elves know it well. They’re the ones who told me about it, and provided the supper.

“Oh, and one other thing,” added Harry as they pulled out all the dishes and set them on the table, “Dobby’s down in the kitchens, working for Hogwarts now. Winky’s there too, but she didn’t seem to be doing much working. Still refuses to work for anyone besides Crouch, apparently."

Harry and Hermione enjoyed their Christmas feast, talking about Dobby, and Winky, and eventually on to wondering what the teachers were thinking right now since Harry wasn’t there, and how they’d taken it when they couldn’t find Harry to start the dance. Harry wondered if they had a search party out for them, or at least him, at the moment, while Hermione sighed when she thought about how much trouble they were going to be in the following morning when they showed up in the Great Hall for breakfast like nothing had happened.

All the food finally eaten, and feeling completely stuffed, they retired to the couch that had suddenly appeared in front of the fire when Hermione had mentioned that she really wished they had one. Hermione snuggled into Harry’s side as he wrapped his arm around her shoulder, and they continued to talk late into the night.

They finally had to call it a night though, as they knew midnight was fast approaching, and they wanted to be in their respective beds before anyone else made it back to the tower and their dorm rooms. Holding hands, just because it felt right, they walked from the Room of Requirement back to the Gryffindor common room, both thinking it was the best Christmas they’d ever had. As they parted ways in front of the two staircases, Hermione leaned up and gave him a kiss on the cheek, thanking him yet again for such a wonderful Christmas, and bidding him goodnight.

By the time the rest of their dormmates had made it back to their rooms, they were both fast asleep.


	7. Yule Ball Fallout

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone’s comments about not being able to wait for the fallout, I ended up rewriting some of and adding to this section (adding ~1250 words) to have more fallout than it originally did. So there — look what you made me do! Shame on you! ;) [And some of you still probably won’t think it’s enough, but oh well. Write your own story.]

Boxing Day morning, Harry and Hermione were the only two students awake in the castle before the sun was high in the sky.

They met up in the common room like every morning, before heading down to the Great Hall to see if it was open yet. They weren’t excited to be grilled by Professor McGonagall, or whoever questioned them about their absence the night before, but better to get it over with as soon as possible, and without anyone around to listen in, than wait until there was a large crowd that would spread it throughout the castle faster than Snape took away points from non-Slytherins.

Walking into the Great Hall a few minutes later, Harry and Hermione found most of the teachers already up at the high table, having their own breakfasts. The pair didn’t even make it to the Gryffindor table before they saw their Head of House stand up and start making a beeline towards them. Sighing in resignation, they continued walking over to their normal seats, where they were met by an irate Professor McGonagall almost as soon as they’d sat down.

“Mister Potter!”

“Yes, ma’am?” asked Harry in innocent confusion, looking up at their Head of House and Transfiguration teacher.

“Where were you last night?!”

“Enjoying a quiet evening away from the crowds,” replied Harry truthfully, turning back to the table full of breakfast food in front of him as if that simple, honest answer should be enough to appease the witch, and started shoveling bacon onto his empty plate, before deciding to just dump the entire platter of meaty goodness. He knew the house elves would refill the platter as soon as it hit the table again, in case any of the other people not up yet wanted any, and Hermione always just stole off his plate anyway.

“That’s not where you were supposed to be!”

“It’s where I chose to be, because the alternative didn’t pique my interest,” replied Harry boredly, picking up the topmost piece of bacon off the mound on his plate and biting it in half.

“You can’t just _choose_ not to do something!”

“Something that’s not required I can,” answered Harry after finishing up the piece of bacon. “It’s not like I skipped class or homework or anything. In fact, I finished that all up before break even started.”

“But it _was_ required! I told you that after class!”

“And where was it you told me I was supposed to be again?” asked Harry in fake confusion, nibbling on the end of his next piece of bacon like he was deep in thought trying to remember.

“You were supposed to be at the Yule Ball to open the dance!!!”

At this point, Hermione decided to jump in. She’d promised Harry that she’d defend his decision back when he made it the day Professor McGonagall first told them about the Ball, and she meant it. Listening to Harry talk Professor McGonagall in circles was fun and all, but it could only last so long before detentions started getting thrown around and points started getting removed — not that points actually meant anything, especially in a year with no House Cup, but detentions were still generally to be avoided when possible.

“No, you _wanted_ him to be at the Yule Ball to open the dance,” she said cooly. “But Harry didn’t want to embarrass himself in front of the entire school, which he already told you when you first informed us about the Yule Ball. And if Harry was a non-champion, like he _should_ be, no one would have even noticed, let alone cared, if he’d decided not to attend. As for being a champion, and the tournament, Harry is only bound to compete in the tournament itself, and the Yule Ball is not an actual part of the tournament, it is just a social gathering that has been held along with the tournament about a third of the time based on my research, and therefore Harry was in no way bound to attend it, or risk losing his magic for not attending it.”

Professor McGonagall stared at Hermione in shock for a second, clearly taken aback, though whether by Hermione’s answer or the fact the usually highly rule-abiding top student was encouraging rule-breaking (or at least what Professor Mcgonagall considered rule breaking), Harry wasn’t sure.

“That’s not—! He can’t just—! Mister Potter can’t just not do his champion duties because he doesn’t want to do them! He embarrassed Gryffindor, and Hogwarts as a whole!”

“ _Really?_ ” replied Hermione, giving their Head a hard, skeptical look. “Go ask any student from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang what they thought about Mister Potter not being there, or if they think any less of Hogwarts for him not coming. Half of them won’t even have realized he wasn’t there, while the other half won’t care. And as for the rest of Hogwarts, half of them hate Harry no matter what he does, and most of them think he’s a lying cheat who entered himself, even if some of them do still support him in the tournament despite, or perhaps because of, that. So maybe the other two headmasters think less of Hogwarts because Harry didn’t attend, but I’m pretty sure they think far less of Hogwarts because Harry’s in the tournament to begin with than the fact he didn’t come to the Ball. But as far as students’ opinions are concerned, which is far more important to how Hogwarts is viewed and will be viewed moving into the future, your precious reputation hasn’t suffered. Also, when did reputation become more important than the students themselves?”

Once again, Professor McGonagall just stared at her, left speechless. Not that anything Hermione was saying was actually getting through, she was just shocked that Miss Granger was talking back to her, usually such a perfect student.

“If you’re going to give me detention or take away points, just do it already,” came Harry’s bored voice, pulling their Head of House back into reality. “We know you won’t Hermione, because for one thing you probably didn’t even notice she wasn’t there last night, proving her point, and for another thing, since she isn’t a champion, even you have to admit she had a choice of whether to attend the Ball or not, proving another of her points."

McGonagall turned to stare at Harry for a second, before finally mumbling, “No, no detention. I just— Never mind.”

And with that she finally walked away, leaving Harry and Hermione to enjoy their breakfast in peace.

“I suppose that went better than it could have,” said Harry once she was out of earshot.

“You didn’t get detention for not doing anything wrong, which is certainly better than could have been said if it’d been Snape to come talk to you,” replied Hermione, nodding in agreement.

~HP~

Later that afternoon, Harry and Hermione returned to the Gryffindor common room after spending the morning outside enjoying the winter wonderland that was the Hogwarts grounds in the winter time.

They had just sat down at their normal table in the corner when Ron stormed up, looking furious. “Where the hell were you two last night?! And _you_ , telling me you had a date!"

“No, I said I couldn’t go with you,” replied Hermione calmly. “I never said anything about having a date to the Yule Ball, just that I couldn’t go to it with _you_.”

“And as for where we were, neither of us wanted to go to the Ball, and as it wasn’t required, neither of us went,” added Harry. “We just spent the evening alone, visited the library for a while to read, and enjoyed a quiet evening without any crowds.”

“You can’t do that! Everyone was supposed to go to the Yule Ball!” Ron shouted back.

“Really?” asked Hermione with a raised eyebrow. “And who said that? Cause I sure can’t remember any teacher telling us we had to attend.”

Sure, technically Professor Mcgonagall _had_ told Harry he had to attend, but Ron didn’t know that, and none of the teachers had told the rest of them that they had to attend, or even were _supposed_ to attend. It might have been implied, but certainly hadn’t ever been stated outright.

Ron just stared at her for several seconds, before squawking out, “But—! That’s not—! Of course we were supposed to go! That’s why they held it! Everyone went but you two!”

“And good for them. No one’s saying they shouldn’t have gone if they wanted to. We’re just saying we _didn’t_ want to go, so we didn’t,” replied Harry. “And Hermione told you she couldn’t go with you because she’d already promised me that she wasn’t going and would spend the evening with me instead, so don’t start that again — we both remember how that turned out for you last time.”

Ron wisely kept his mouth shut at that, just glaring at Harry for several long seconds, before turning and stomping off to resume his game of wizarding chess with Seamus that he’d been playing before spotting Harry and Hermione for the first time all day.

Meanwhile back at the table, Harry quietly asked Hermione, “So who do you think will be next to ask us where we were?”

As it turned out, the answer to that question would be none other than everyone’s favorite young Snake.

“Couldn’t find a date that was willing to go with you? Not even the buck-toothed mudblood?” he sneered at Harry the following morning after walking over to the Gryffindor table.

“I just didn’t want to go, so I didn’t,” replied Harry with a shrug, barely bothering to even glance up at Draco. “And not that it’s any of your business, but I actually spent the entire evening with said 'buck-toothed mudblood’,” he added, making air quotes around 'buck-toothed mudblood’. “Better than having to watch you try to dance.”

At this there were several sniggers from the other Gryffindors sitting around Harry and Hermione, causing Draco to scowl.

“You better watch what you’re saying,” he growled, his normal drawl completely gone.

“Or what?” replied Harry, rolling his eyes. “You already try to curse me in the hallways, get me in trouble with Snape, and just generally torment me as much as humanly possible. You really can’t threaten someone when you have nothing worse to do. Never start with your final threat, or else you have nowhere to go but backwards.”

Draco stared at Harry in shock for several seconds, wondering where the shy, timid boy who could be easily intimidated had gone, and where this maturing teenager who handled himself like the upcoming lord of an important family should came from.

As more Gryffindors made their way to the table for breakfast, and he could see he was quickly getting outnumbered to the point he’d become a spell testing dummy should an actual fight break out, Draco scowled, “This isn’t over,” and turned on his heels and slithered back to nest, better known as the Slytherin table.

Once he was gone, Neville looked across the table at the pair and asked, “Where _were_ you two last night? When he mentioned it, I realized he was right and you two weren’t there.”

Every head near them turned to hear Harry’s answer.

“Didn’t want to go, so we didn’t,” shrugged Harry before turning back to his food, making it clear that that was all the answer there was.

Whether word spread from this, or no one else cared enough to ask, Harry and Hermione didn’t get asked again where they’d been during the Yule Ball.

"You know, I expected more people to ask where we were, and why we weren’t at the Ball,” Harry mentioned to Hermione a few days later, when no one else had asked them about it.

“Honestly, I don’t think most of them noticed our absence,” replied Hermione. “They were either too busy enjoying themselves, or too busy hating the entire thing, to notice that you weren’t there. I mean, obviously they weren’t going to notice my absence, other than the redhead, who after demanding I go with him, would of course be looking to see who I was going with instead of him, but no one else was going to notice that the bushy-haired know-it-all wasn’t there. So as long as Professor McGonagall, or any of the other teachers, didn’t make some big announcement about you not being there, it wouldn’t even dawn on most of them that you weren’t there, that they didn’t just miss you in the throng of two hundred something students."

* * *

A few days before the beginning of term, Hermione was perusing the Daily Prophet, when she suddenly nudged Harry sharply in the side.

“What is it?” asked Harry, taking in the look of shock on her face.

Hermione pointed at an article titled "Dumbledore's Giant Mistake”, so Harry quickly read it. He looked back up at her a few minutes later.

“So what if he’s half-giant?” asked Harry in confusion. “Sure, he looks a bit imposing, and he likes dangerous creatures too much, but he clearly isn’t, how did she describe it — _bloodthirsty and brutal_.”

“You know how the Malfoys are bigoted against non-purebloods?”

Harry nodded his head.

“Well, just about all of the wizarding world, including those like the Weasleys who claim they’re above that kind of thing, are bigoted against giants,” replied Hermione. "Which is probably one of the reasons so many of the giants did join Voldemort — he offered them freedom and respect that they knew they’d never get from the Ministry. Although, honestly, this really shouldn’t be such big news. I mean, anyone who knows anything about giants and wizards and spells will know Hagrid obviously has to be part giant — then again, given our History of Magic classes, and a complete lack of learning about giants, and other things like werewolves, in any other classes, maybe it’s not so surprising apparently no one else knew he’s half-giant."

Looking back down at the article, Harry said, “I wonder what _is_ up with those skrewts. I mean, they were kind of sketchy to begin with, but if this is to be believed and Hagrid really did try to avoid talking about them, sounds like they really could be illegal as well.”

Hermione just shrugged indifferently. “Maybe someone from the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures will come take a look and kill them all for us — however many are still left after they hopefully spent all of Christmas break killing themselves.”

~HP~

They didn’t think about Hagrid or the blast-ended skrewts again until the first day of classes, when they had Care of Magical Creatures class second thing after Herbology.

They had just trudged through the mountains of snow that lay between the greenhouses and Hagrid’s hut, when they heard a distinctly not-Hagrid voice haranguing them.

"Hurry up, now, the bell rang five minutes ago,” this feminine voice barked at them as they struggled toward her through the thick snow.

“There’s three feet of snow and the other half of our class, the Slytherins, aren’t even within sight yet,” retorted Hermione. “Anyway, where’s our teacher?”

"My name is Professor Grubbly-Plank," she said briskly. "I am your temporary Care of Magical Creatures teacher.”

“Where’s Hagrid?” asked Harry concernedly. “He’s not sick or injured or something, is he?”

"He is indisposed," replied Grubbly shortly, telling them absolutely nothing about their teacher and why he wasn’t there to teach class, and doing nothing to assuage their worry that he might be deathly sick or injured.

A few minutes later, the Slytherins finally came wandering up with unpleasant laughter and gleeful sneers, more than ten minutes after the bell had rung. Also, none of them appeared to be surprised by the presence of Grubbly. And as Grubbly completely ignored their lateness and didn’t even make the slightest peep about it, Hermione had to wonder if Grubbly had been a Slytherin herself when she’d come through Hogwarts, or if she was just scared of them or Snape like all the teachers seemed to be.

"This way, please," said Grubbly, leading them towards the edge of the forest, where a unicorn was tethered.

As Harry and Hermione moved toward it, Grubbly threw out an arm nearly clotheslining Harry, barking, "Boys keep back! Unicorns prefer us women's touch. Girls to the front, and approach with care, come on, easy does it…”, before walking slowly up to the unicorn with the girls in the class, leaving the boys behind at the paddock fence.

In solidarity with Harry and the rest of the boys in the class, Hermione hung back with Harry instead of falling in line behind Grubbly like the rest of the girls.

"What do you think's wrong with Hagrid?” Harry asked Hermione quietly as soon as Grubbly was out of earshot.

But before Hermione could answer, Draco sneered, "Oh he hasn't been attacked, Potter, if that's what you're thinking. No, he's just too ashamed to show his big, ugly face.”

“Half-giant article,” whispered Hermione into Harry’s ear, before Draco could explain it in whatever nasty way he was obviously dying to.

Harry nodded, finally understanding why their half-giant friend wasn’t there to teach class — wizarding society’s bigotry at work yet again, just like with Lupin, the best teacher they’d ever had, leaving at the end of the previous year.

Looking back over at Draco, Harry said with an eyeroll, “Flobberworm? Really? You do realize anyone who’s ever opened a magizoology book will know you’re a dirty stinking liar, right? And it’s just amazing how you’re too scared to say anything about Hagrid, but told the most prolific reporter for the only newspaper in all of Britain, without the cover of anonymity. It’s almost like you’re not scared in the least to tell everyone as far and wide as you can that you hate Hagrid.”

“Then I guess it’s a good thing everyone who reads the Daily Prophet are all sheeple,” laughed Draco evilly. “But who cares, since this should finally put an end to the oaf's teaching career. Half-giant...and there was me thinking he'd just swallowed a bottle of Skele-Gro when he was young.... None of the mummies and daddies are going to like this at all.... They'll be worried he'll eat their kids, ha, ha…."

“How on earth could a pureblood like you not be able to see that Hagrid is obviously part giant?” sneered Hermione in return. “Even I, a stupid mudblood, knew that since year one."

But before Draco could reply, Grubbly’s voice interrupted them from where she and the girls were surrounding the unicorn.

"Are you paying attention over there?”

“Um, no,” replied Harry. “You just told us we weren’t allowed anywhere near your precious little unicorn because we’re male, so we’re over here having to kill time until you stop being sexist and start teaching us as well."

Ignoring him like every other time he or Hermione had spoken, Grubbly-Plank started enumerating in a loud voice, so that the boys could hear too, even though they clearly weren’t paying any attention to her.

“Come on,” whispered Hermione into Harry’s ear, grabbing his arm and dragging him back towards Hagrid’s hut.

Nobody paid them any attention or tried to stop them, and they soon arrived at Hagrid’s front door. Hermione knocked firmly. After several seconds, she tried knocking again, a little harder and louder this time. Still, there was no answer.

So Hermione said loudly, “Hagrid, you have ten seconds to open this door or I’m unlocking it myself!”

Hermione counted to ten in her head, before pulling out her wand and pointing it at the lock and saying, “ _Alohomora_.”

The lock clicked, and Hermione pushed the door open, nearly being bowled over by Fang. Petting the giant bloodhound, she and Harry stepped inside the dark hut. Both casting _lumos_ , they saw Hagrid lying on his bed, looking across the room at them through swollen eyes, having clearly been crying for a long time. He really looked like a mess, his face blotchy and his hair looking even more like a mess of tangled wire than normal.

“Hagrid,” said Harry.

“E‘Lo,” replied the half-giant hoarsely.

“Sorry for bursting in on you like this,” said Hermione flatly, not sounding at all like she was sorry. “We just figured you might be holing yourself up because of what Rita wrote about you in the Prophet, and after five minutes of having to listen to that Grubby lady, we figured it was time to get you off your arse so we didn't have to put up with her for another class, or let any of the other grades have to suffer through her."

Hagrid blinked his beetle-black eyes at her in surprise.

“You really want me back teaching? I-I’m half a giant!” croaked Hagrid.

“And I’m related to the Durselys,” retorted Harry. “Who cares who or what you’re related to. You’re _you_ , not them. And look at Professor Lupin, one of the best teachers we’ve had in our four years here.”

“Please come back and teach, Hagrid," said Hermione softly. “We really miss you, and it hasn’t even been a full class.”

Hagrid finally sat up on the edge of his bed. Harry and Hermione could see tears leaking out of his eyes and into his furry beard, but they were pretty sure these were more of gratefulness than despair than the previous ones staining his face were.

“If you really think—“

“Absolutely!” exclaimed Harry. “We want you back."

Hagrid heaved out a sigh. “Okay, then. I’ll go talk to Dumbledore.”

Harry and Hermione followed him out of his hut, and watched him lumber up towards the castle, before walking back over to where Grubbly still wasn’t letting any of the boys near her unicorn.

“The old oaf going to give his resignation?” sneered Draco as they walked up.

“Nope. Telling Dumbledore he’ll resume teaching this afternoon or tomorrow,” smirked Hermione.

Fortunately, at that moment the bell rung signaling the end of class, so Draco didn’t have time to say anything that would require Hermione smacking him again, like she'd had to the year before.


	8. The Night Before

Two weeks before the second task, Harry and Hermione were just leaving Defense Against the Dark Arts, when Mad-Eye held Harry back for a minute.

Once everyone was gone, and the door was closed behind Hermione, the ex-auror looked down at Harry and gruffly asked, “Had any luck with your egg yet?"

“Oh, yeah! Of course! Figured it out weeks ago,” lied Harry with a passion.

Unfortunately, Mad-Eye didn’t seem to be buying it.

“Uh-huh,” he growled, giving Harry a look that implied he didn’t believe Harry had even opened his egg yet, let alone actually knew what the clue was — which admittedly _was_ closer to the truth. So close, in fact, it was dead on.

But he didn’t ask Harry anything more about it, and let him leave.

As soon as Harry was out in the hallway, Hermione whispered with curiosity and concern lacing her voice, “What did he want?”

“Wanted to know if I’d had any luck figuring out the second clue,” replied Harry. “I enthusiastically assured him I did, but I don’t think he bought what I was selling."

“Hmm…” pondered Hermione mostly to herself.

“What?” asked Harry as they walked down to the Great Hall together.

“I was just thinking — Mad-Eye told you what the first task was, right? And now he’s asking if you’ve figured out the second task,” replied Hermione.

“Well, yeah, I guess…” said Harry slowly, “but he didn’t actually tell me what the second task is, did he? I mean, he could have just told me that I’ll have to wrestle a hippogriff or whatever if he’d wanted to, couldn’t he? I figured he was just concerned for my safety and wanted to know how I was getting along."

“True, it just seems a little odd to me,” replied Hermione. “And you’ve made it pretty clear you’re not actually trying….”

“Do the teachers really look like they’ve accepted that yet?” asked Harry, giving her a slightly disbelieving look.

“Okay, okay!” laughed Hermione. “You’ve got a point there.”

~HP~

A week later, Harry and Hermione were taking the long, scenic route from the library back to their common room, when suddenly there was a loud crack, and Dobby was standing in front of them.

Before Harry or Hermione had time to even realize what was happening, the house elf squeaked out panically, “Harry Potter has to rescue what he will miss most from the merpeople!”

“Dobby, Dobby, slow down!” exclaimed Harry. “What is going on?”

“Dobby just over heard the second task, sir!” squeaked Dobby. “They is going to take what Harry Potter will miss the most, and he will only have an hour to go into the lake and retrieve it from the mercity! Dobby can’t let Harry Potter lose what matters most to him!"

Harry and Hermione stared down at Dobby in shock, not in the least because the house elf had somehow found out what the second task was going to be.

Finally, Harry said, “Uh, thanks Dobby. Thanks for telling me.”

“Of course!” squeaked Dobby. “Dobby will always help Harry Potter! Now Dobby must get back to the kitchens before he is missed.” And right before disappearing with another loud _crack_ , he added, “And Dobby is happy to meet Harry’s Missy Mione!”

“Harry’s Missy Mione?” asked Hermione once he was gone, with mirth dancing in her eyes.

“I don’t know,” replied Harry shaking his head. “He called me Master once when I first saw him down in the kitchens, and he told me to think ‘I need a place for a date’ to open the correct Room of Requirement for Christmas dinner, but Missy Mione is new to me."

Hermione laughed. “Well, I like it. It suits the cute little guy. You’ll have to introduce him to me properly sometime.”

“Yeah, maybe,” replied Harry. “But looks like we know what the second task is now.”

“The question is, did Dobby just happen to overhear it, or did somebody intentionally talk about it when they knew Dobby was listening in, so he’d find out and go tell you?” asked Hermione, turning serious.

“You think Mad-Eye?”

“I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. But you know about both tasks before they happened, when you shouldn’t have known about either.”

By this point they’d reached the Fat Lady’s Portrait, and the Gryffindor common room behind it, so they dropped the subject for the time being, giving the Fat Lady the password and steeping into the hubbub that was the common room late in the evenings.

* * *

The evening of the second task, Harry and Hermione were relaxing on the couch in the Gryffindor common room in front of the fire together, when the twins walked up.

"McGonagall wants to see you, Hermione,” said George slightly grimly.

“Why?” asked Hermione in surprise.

“Don’t know. She didn’t look happy though,” answered Fred. “She just said to go down to her office.”

“Okay, thanks,” replied Hermione. Once the twins had wandered off, she turned to Harry and said, “Well, come on, let’s go see what Professor McGonagall wants.”

“Me?” asked Harry in surprise. “They said she just wants you.”

“And anything she has to tell me, she can tell you as well,” replied Hermione standing up, before reaching down and grabbing his hand and pulling him up after her.

As they walked down the halls towards their Head of House’s office, Harry asked, “You don't think this could have something to do with whatever they’re taking from me for tomorrow, do you?”

Hermione stopped short, causing Harry to have to turn back to look at her. When he did, he quickly asked, “What’s wrong?”, because she had a look of pure horror on her face.

“They can’t—! There’s no way—! That’d be—!” gasped Hermione as much to herself as to him.

“Hermione! What is it?” asked Harry again, shaking her arm.

Hermione looked at him. “The thing you’ll miss most, Harry! What if it’s not a thing?!”

Harry just looked at her in confusion, not following along.

“Me, Harry! Me! I’m what you’d miss most, right?” exclaimed Hermione.

Harry gasped. “But that’d be—!”

“Murder if any of the champions fail, yeah,” replied Hermione. “So I guess a weird definition of almost manslaughter if you all succeeded. And some version of kidnapping, as well, I’m sure."

“What should we do?” asked Harry.

“We go see if we’re right, or completely off base — just make sure you have your hand around your wand at all times, in case we have to fight our way out of there. They can’t hurt you the night before the second task,” replied Hermione.

A few minutes later they knocked on the door to Professor McGonagall’s office, and were told to enter. Inside they found Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall, Cho Chang, a Durmstrang girl they didn’t know, and a younger, smaller version of Fleur that could only be the French girl’s sister.

“Miss Granger! There you—“ began Professor McGonagall, before suddenly cutting off and exclaiming, "Harry! What are you doing here?! You’re not supposed to be here!”

“Anything you have to tell me, you can tell him as well,” answered Hermione, redirecting everyone’s attention back to her.

Everyone stared at her for several seconds, before Professor McGonagall said, “This we can’t. It has to do with the second task tomorrow.”

“So you _are_ going to kidnap us and drop us in the Black Lake,” replied Hermione calm but firmly, her hand gripping her wand in her robes a little more tightly.

The other three students in the room’s jaws dropped. They clearly had yet to be informed what was really about to happen.

“You will be perfectly safe,” said Dumbledore hurriedly.

“And what exactly is going to happen if a champion fails to retrieve whoever you’ve kidnapped from them?” asked Hermione, staring at them hard. She wasn’t particularly concerned for herself, as she wasn’t going to be under any water unless they really did kidnap her and hold her hostage, but she wanted the other three victims to know what their fate would be, along with being able to tell the three champions as soon as she and Harry left.

Dumbledore glanced over at Harry for a split second, before apparently deciding it wasn’t worth trying to make him leave. That, or maybe he had enough real world experience to be able to tell they were both gripping their wands tightly preparing for a fight.

“The merpeople will return them safe and sound after the second task is over,” he said in what Hermione was sure he felt like was a fatherly, reassuring tone.

“Good to know,” replied Hermione coldly. “Now if you’ll excuse us, Harry and I have anywhere to be but here.”

They turned to leave, but before they could even make it out the open door, they heard Professor McGonagall exclaim, “You can’t leave!”

Hermione and Harry turned back to face her, drawing their wands.

“Stop us,” practically growled Hermione, glaring at the two adults, daring them to try to make them stay.

After a couple seconds, Harry and Hermione turned and walked back out again, nobody stopping them this time.

To Harry’s surprise, as soon as they were a few halls away, toward the entrance hall instead of their common room he’d noticed, Hermione turned to him and asked, “How do you get to the kitchens?”

“Um…this way,” replied Harry, leading her down to the kitchens.

Entering them a few minutes later, they were almost immediately pounced on by Dobby.

Squatting down to be on the house elf’s level, Hermione asked him, “Dobby, is there any way for you to immediately take a message to the other three champions, or do you have some way we can get messages to them in a hurry?”

“Of course Dobby can deliver messages, Missy Mione!” squeaked the house elf in reply. “What does Missy Mione need Dobby to tell them?”

“Can someone get me three pieces of parchment and a quill?” asked Hermione, standing up and addressing the whole kitchen.

There was a loud crack, and a second later a return crack, and one of the Hogwarts house elves stepped up to her holding out what she’d requested.

“Thank you,” said Hermione, before walking over to the nearest table and starting to write.

_Fleur Delacour,_

_Hi, this is Hermione Granger, friends with Harry Potter, the fourth champion. You don’t have to believe me, but the thing you will miss most that they have stolen and will put in the lake for you to find is your little sister. Harry and I just escaped from Professor McGonagall’s office, where Dumbledore is doing whatever he’s going to do. He assures that the hostages will all be safe, and if any of the champions fail to rescue their hostage in the allotted hour, that they will be returned safe and sound to the surface after the task is over. Like I said, believe me or not, but I couldn’t in good conscience not warn you._

_Yours, Hermione Granger and Harry Potter_

Then she proceeded to write out similar letters for the other two champions, before sealing them and calling Dobby back over.

“Please immediately deliver these letters to the three champions.”

“Dobby will be happy to do so,” squeaked the house elf with a bow, before _crack_ ing out of existence.

Accepting a late night snack from the house elves, Harry and Hermione walked back out into the hall, and started up towards Gryffindor Tower. But they hadn’t made it more than a few secret passages and a staircase before Harry grabbed Hermione’s arm and pulled her to a stop.

“I’m scared to let you out of my sight. I know they shouldn’t be able to kidnap you from your dorm room, but I don’t exactly have the greatest amount of trust in them at the moment since they’re trying to kidnap you in the first place."

Hermione pulled him in for a hug, not knowing what to say. But as she held him, an idea popped into her mind.

“Hey, Harry?” she asked, pulling back slightly. “Do you think the Room of Requirement could provide us with a bedroom if we asked?”

Harry’s eyebrows rose. “Uh…I guess. Dobby said it could make anything you wanted. Why?”

Hermione rolled her eyes. For being such a great wizard, he could really be dense sometimes.

“To sleep in tonight, so we don’t have to go to separate dorm rooms. I don’t want to leave you either tonight, and if they do try to kidnap me, it’s unlikely they even know about the Room of Requirement, let alone could actually get in.”

“Oh.” After a second, he added, “But would you want to sleep in the same room as me?”

“I’m the one who suggested it, silly,” replied Hermione, ruffling his hair. And she wasn’t planning on merely sleeping in the same _room_ as him either, but he clearly wasn’t quite ready to find that out yet.

Grabbing his hand, she said, “Come on,” before dragging him up towards the seventh floor.

Pacing in front of the blank wall a few minutes later, Hermione thought, _I need a single bed dorm room...I need a single bed dorm room...I need a single bed dorm room_. The door appeared, and Hermione opened it to find a cozy little bedroom with a large bed on one side, dressers next to it that hopefully had clothes for them, a door that presumably led into a bathroom, and a lit fireplace in the wall directly across from them.

“Um, Hermione? There’s only one bed in here,” Harry said hesitantly as he looked around the room.

“Like I said, I don’t want to leave your side tonight,” replied Hermione casually as she walked into the room and over to the dressers.

Sure enough, they contained clothes for each of them, and Hermione picked out something she could sleep in that hopefully wouldn’t scare Harry too bad. Turning back around, she found Harry predictably staring at her in disbelief.

Taking pity on him, she said, “If I can feel you next to me all night, I’ll know we’re both safe. Just think of it as a really long hug.”

Giving her one last long look, Harry finally sighed and said, “If you’re sure.”

Ten minutes later they’d both changed and brushed their teeth, and climbed under the covers. Despite her saying she wanted to be able to feel him all night, Harry had left several feet between them when he’d climbed in, and turned his back towards her in a noble effort to give her all the space she wanted. But Hermione just took the opportunity to shuffle up behind him and wrap her arms tightly around him, pressing her front flush against his back.

“Night, Harry,” she whispered into his hair.

“Night, Hermione.”

~HP~

Meanwhile, Professor McGonagall and Dumbledore were still in her office, having a conundrum.

They had already put the other three hostages into enchanted sleeps, but their plans to put Hermione at the bottom of the lake with them had gone up in flames. But they still needed someone for Harry to rescue, in case the first task had been a fluke and Harry actually tried the task this time. That, and they still weren’t convinced that he hadn’t just skipped the first task because he didn’t know what to do, and having three months to prepare for this one, he’d be all gung-ho and trying to earn back as many points as he could so he’d still have a fighting chance to win the tournament.

“But who can we get?” asked Professor McGonagall. “Miss Granger’s nowhere to be found, house elves searched her dorm and the Gryffindor common room, the entire library, and everywhere else she might be hiding with no luck, so she’s completely out."

“How about Mister Ronald Weasley?” asked Dumbledore. "He is friends with Harry and Miss Granger, isn’t he? Mrs Weasley keeps asking me to let him come over at the beginning of every summer.”

“I don’t know…” answered Professor McGonagall slowly. “I haven’t seen him sitting with Mister Potter and Miss Granger in Transfiguration class or the Great Hall. I don’t know if they’re getting along at the moment.”

“Then this could be the perfect opportunity to reunite them,” replied Dumbledore enthusiastically. “Nothing like a good rescue to make people friends again.”

“I suppose you’re right,” said Professor McGonagall. “I’ll have a house elf go collect him.”


	9. 2nd Task

The following morning, Harry awoke to a face full of bushy brown hair.

Apparently during the night they’d shifted so that Harry was spooning Hermione instead of the other way around like they’d started the night, but Harry wasn’t complaining. Not that he didn’t like having Hermione wrapped around his back, but it felt nice to be holding her, keeping her safe from any kidnappers, as well.

And Hermione apparently didn’t mind either, as when she started to waken a few minutes later, she snuggled back into him deeper, sleepily mumbling, “Morning, Harry.”

“Morning, Hermione,” replied Harry softly, stroking his fingers up and down her bare arm. “Sleep well?”

“Best I ever have,” replied Hermione with a smile Harry could hear in her voice. “You?”

“Same,” answered Harry. “But as comfortable as I am, we should probably get up and get ready. The second task is at nine-thirty, and I’d hate to be late. I mean, I might get disqualified from this great honor if I don’t show up at least fifteen minutes early.”

Hermione burst into laughter, finally managing to choke out, “And we wouldn’t want that, now would we?”

Fifteen minutes later they’d changed and thrown their robes back on, and walked out of the Room of Requirement, closing the ornate door behind them. As soon as it closed, it disappeared completely, leaving behind nothing but the blank stretch of wall they’d started with when they’d walked up the night before.

After a leisurely breakfast in the Great Hall, Harry and Hermione strolled down to the gold-draped table by the edge of the Black Lake, arriving fifteen minutes before the second task was scheduled to start. Hermione bid him goodbye, giving him a quick peck on the cheek before heading around the edge of the lake over to the stands to watch. As Harry walked up to the other three champions, they all gave him tight nods, indicating that they’d received Hermione’s warnings the night before. Harry nodded back before turning to give the judges his full attention. For some reason, Percy was sitting where Mr Crouch should have been, but Harry didn’t think much about it as Bagman began giving them their instructions and lining them up at the water’s edge.

As soon as the whistle shrilly blew through the cold, still February air, all four of the champions shed their robes. Underneath they were all wearing swimming suits — Cedric had on a bright yellow pair with the Hufflepuff badger embroidered on one leg, Krum’s were blood red with the Durmstrang crest, Harry’s were bright red with a gold lion (he’d found them sitting on top of all the other clothes in the Room of Requirement dresser when he’d opened it that morning), and Fleur’s was a one-piece in silvery-blue.

As the three champions cast charms on themselves and dove into the water, Harry did the same. Except the only charm he cast on himself was the warming charm Hermione had taught him when they’d found out he was going to have to float around in the Black Lake in February for an hour. Cannonballing into the water, he found it pleasantly cool, and leisurely swam a little ways out into the shallows as the champions disappeared underwater. As he turned to float on his back for a while and watch the birds fly overhead, he heard catcalls and jeers from the Slytherins, but payed them no heed. If he had to look for whatever they’d taken from him in the Black Lake, he’d search wherever and however he liked, even if that meant searching the skies above the Black Lake, and no further than fifty feet from the shore.

About forty-five minutes into the task, Harry was floating said fifty feet away from shore when Fleur came swimming up to him.

“Everything okay?” he asked concernedly.

“Attacked by ze grindylows,” she replied, pointing at the cuts on her face as proof. “And thanks for ze ‘eads up zat Gabrielle will be safe. I would ‘ave been in a complete panic if you ‘adn't.”

“Thank Hermione. It was her idea,” replied Harry. “And go see Madam Pomfrey for those cuts.”

Fleur swam the rest of the way into shore, where she was swallowed up by a blanket from Madam Pomfrey as soon she was out of the water. Not having anything better to do, and afraid he was going to shrive up into a prune if he stayed out in the water any longer, Harry slowly followed after her, being wrapped in a blanket himself as soon as he stepped out of the water, which was almost immediately after that wrapped by Hermione’s arms, giving him a hug.

Fifteen minutes later, a whistle blew indicating the end of the hour, but neither Cedric nor Krum were back yet. But sixty seconds later, Cedric’s head broke through the water, followed a second later by Cho’s. A short bit after that a shark head surfaced, before quickly retransfiguring back into Krum, and with him the Durmstrang girl they’d seen in Professor McGonagall’s office the night before.

All three champions plus Harry safely out of the water, Dumbledore walked over to the edge of the lake and crouched, screeching with the mermaid who’d surfaced.

Standing back up, Dumbledore addressed the crowds. “While Merchieftainess Murcus retrieves the other two hostages, we will score the four champions in the order they exited the water. So first up, Fleur Delacore.”

Like the first task, the five judges cast their scores into the air for all to see.

Fleur ended up with twenty-five points — apparently a successful charm was worth something, even though she hadn’t successfully rescued her sister.

Harry tied his first task score of zero — apparently floating around the shallows and chatting with Fleur when she surfaced wasn’t worth anything.

Cedric scored forty-seven points — apparently being a minute outside the time limit cost three points.

Krum added forty points to what he’d earned during the first task — apparently three points per minute outside the time limit wasn’t quite a hard rule, as he hadn’t resurfaced until five minutes after Cedric.

“So in final,” came Bagman's voice booming through the still winter air, “Krum is in the lead with eighty points, Cedric is in second with seventy-two points, Fleur has seventy points, and currently in last place, Harry Potter with zero points. And finally, before you are all dismissed, the third and final task will take place at dusk on the twenty-fourth of June.”

At that moment, the mermaid who’d been talking with Dumbledore swam up with Gabrielle and Ron. As soon as Fleur saw her sister she rushed over, helping pull her out of the water. She helped Madam Pomfrey wrap a blanket snugly around the young girl, before hugging her tightly and whispering sisterly things softly in her ear.

Ron, meanwhile, as soon as he saw Harry, shouted, “Where the bloody hell were you?! You were supposed to rescue me!”

“I’m not trying to win,” replied Harry patiently. “I already told you that. And I wasn’t about to risk the dangers of the lake when I knew whoever they’d taken was going to be completely safe. And just so you know, I didn’t know it was _you_ down there — I didn’t specifically not rescue _you_.”

“How could you not know?! I’m your best friend!” Ron shouted back, storming the twenty feet or so over to where Harry, Hermione, and the champions were standing.

“Friends?” scoffed Harry in disbelief. “You didn’t believe me when I said I didn’t put my name in the goblet, and you’ve spent the last four months refusing to talk to me. And beyond that, you never apologized to Hermione for being the reason she was in the restroom when the troll nearly killed her, refusing to talk to her for turning in my Firebolt to Professor McGonagall, blaming Crookshanks for your rat’s disappearance — even after it turned out to be Peter Pettigrew, mass murderer — or for any of the constant arguing, bickering, and snapping you do at her, which she almost always turns out to be right about regardless of what it is you’re fighting about that day. How am I supposed to be friends with someone like that? You made it abundantly clear after my name came out of the goblet that you didn’t want to be friends with me any more — well, you’ve got it. And if you do ever decide that you want to become friends with me again, start by sincerely apologizing to Hermione for all the times you’ve hurt her, and start treating her nicer."

Ron just stared back at him in shock, as did several other people around them, including Professor McGonagall and the five judges. Harry, meanwhile, turned back to Ludo Bagman, turning his back on Ron in the process, both to tell Ron their discussion was over, and in case Bagman had anything more to tell the champions before dismissing them.

Awkward silence reigned for several long seconds, before Ludo awkwardly cleared his throat, drawing the rest of the champions attention to him. “You will be notified of what the third task is one month beforehand. You are all dismissed.”

Without even glancing at Ron, Harry turned and started heading up to the Great Hall for lunch, Hermione hurrying after him.

“You don’t have to stand up for me like that,” she whispered as soon as they were out of earshot of the redhead.

“Of course I do,” replied Harry like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “It took you mentioning it, and a few months apart from him for me to finally realize it, but he treats you terribly. Not always, but far too much. And I know you don’t need anyone to defend you, and everyone who knows anything about you knows you’d be better at defending yourself if you ever had to than most adults, but you’re too nice and polite to tell him off yourself — even if you did slap Draco last year — so someone has to. Which is me.”

Hermione grabbed his hand, squeezing it tightly before twining her fingers with his.

“Thank you. It means a lot. Really.”

~HP~

Whether out of a desire to steal Harry’s limelight for not rescuing him, from wanting to one up him after their brief argument on the shore after the second task, or simply because he wanted the fame regardless of what Harry did or did not do, over the next several weeks Ron was basking in all the attention everyone was giving him for being one of the hostages and the general curiosity about what had happened under the lake.

At first his story seemed to match what Harry and Hermione figured really happened based on their own trip to Professor McGonagall’s office the night before the second task and everything they heard there, but by a week after the second task, he was telling a thrilling tale of kidnap in which he struggled single-handedly against fifty heavily armed merpeople who had to beat him into submission before tying him up.

"But I had my wand hidden up my sleeve. I could've taken those mer-idiots any time I wanted.”

While the kidnapping portion of his story might have had some merit, even if it hadn’t occurred in any of the various ways Ron had told it so far, Harry doubted anyone was believing any part of Ron’s stories after about day two, especially everyone who’d heard his story more than once as it changed and fancified every few hours, but it made for good entertainment, to see what he was claiming he’d done this time instead of merely being put to sleep. Neither Harry nor Hermione said anything to contradict his stories, as any attention on him meant less attention on Harry, which was always a good thing in Harry’s opinion, who unlike Ron, hated being the center of attention.

Especially as being the center of attention had more often than not been a negative thing — being target by Snape every single year, everyone staring at him and whispering his name his first few weeks at Hogwarts, losing a hundred and fifty points for saving Hagrid’s arse with the dragon, Gilderoy Lockhart and Colin Creevey’s obsessions with him throughout second year, multiple teachers chewing him and Ron out for being resourceful and making it to school the only way they saw possible after Dobby had shut the barrier on them and then Ron’s mother chewing them out for the same thing in front of the entire school, being at the scene of all the early basilisk attacks, being a parselmouth, being Sirius’s target, fainting on the train when the dementors invaded, and his name coming out of the goblet, just to name a few.

Even the Daily Prophet article the next morning had increased the attention on Ron, as Rita had lengthily pontificated on the rather short argument between Harry and Ron by the water’s edge after the task, but as everyone who knew Harry at all already knew that he and Ron hadn’t been on talking terms since Harry’s name came out of the goblet, this didn’t exact count as news, and didn’t really lead to any increased attention on Harry.

But after a few weeks, everyone’s interest in Ron died out, as everyone moved on to the latest juicy piece of gossip. Ron tried stretching out his fifteen minutes of fame as long as he could, but eventually there was no one left willing to listen to his tales of daring adventure, and he returned to merely being that other Weasley boy who used to be friends with Harry Potter.


	10. Hopes and Dreams

It turned out being a champion, or considered such by all the castle, was surprisingly similar to being a completely normal student the vast majority of the year.

Between February Twenty-Fourth and May Twenty-Seventh, Harry couldn’t tell the slightest difference between being a champion and if he’d not had his name put in the goblet. He still had mountains of homework that refused to do themselves despite being magical, and he had nothing tournament related to do, and wouldn’t have even if he had actually been trying in the tournament.

And even on the last Thursday of May, when Professor McGonagall told him after Transfiguration that the champions were to assemble on the Quidditch pitch that evening to hear the third task, life still didn’t change for Harry, because he _wasn’t_ trying. Confirming with Hermione that learning what the third task was couldn’t possibly be consider competing, when nine o’clock rolled around that evening, Harry remained at the table he and Hermione were working on their homework at in the Gryffindor common room. After all, he’d done just fine goofing off during the first two tasks, why should the third be any different? And anyway, there seemed like a pretty good chance he’d learn what the third task was before the day of anyway, if the first two tasks were anything to go by.

And Harry knew there’d be the normal shouting the next time Professor McGonagall saw him, after word got back to her about his not showing up, but he didn’t know how he could have made it any clearer over the previous two tasks that he didn't care and was just meeting the bare minimum requirements of ‘competing’, so he didn’t really care what she thought.

The following morning, when he and Hermione walked into the Great Hall, they’d barely made it halfway to the Gryffindor table when they saw Professor McGonagall start moving. Deciding to make things easy for the old lady, Hermione grabbed Harry’s hand and made a line directly for their Head of House.

“Where were you last night?!” exclaimed Professor McGonagall as soon as she was close enough to whisper sternly and therefore not tell the entire Hall what she had to say.

“Gryffindor common room, studying,” replied Harry with a look of innocent confusion he’d perfected over the years from every time Hermione asked him what he’d been doing after he’d been doing something he shouldn’t have and she clearly knew it, probably due to the large number of flames actively surrounding them at the moment he was trying to be innocently confused. For some reason, Hermione never bought it — he still couldn’t understand.

“You were _supposed_ to be down at the Quidditch pitch to hear the third task,” growled their stern Transfiguration teacher, buying his innocence about as much as Hermione usually did.

“Ah, yes, that…” replied Harry. “Well, you see, Hermione assured me that learning about the task couldn’t be considered as part of competing in the tournament and therefore my magic wasn’t at risk, and just like the first two tasks, I don’t care what the third task is.”

Professor McGonagall stared at him like he was crazy. For some reason, none of the adults still seemed to be able to get their heads around the idea of having someone who didn’t enter themselves in a tournament to begin with just do the very minimum to technically be ‘competing’, while really not competing at all. It seemed like the very logical thing to Hermione, but then again, she was a muggle, where logic and common sense were in much greater supply, though common sense did seem to be facing a sharp decline that would soon put it in par with the wizarding world’s supply of the not actually very common at all commodity.

“But– That’s not–“ stuttered Professor McGonagall for a second, before Hermione cut her off.

“Either tell us what the third task is, or let us go eat. Harry hasn’t actually done anything wrong other than not doing what you and the rest of the adults think he should want to do, which isn’t a crime, and we have breakfast to eat before classes. _Ma’am_.”

“Right. Uh, well– Um, carry on,” replied Professor McGonagall, completely flustered, and forgetting that she had been planning on telling Harry what the third task was. She didn’t remember until she was back up at the head table, by which point Harry and Hermione were busy eating, and the Hall was starting to fill up.

But a few seats down the table from her, a certain not quite as dead as everyone thought wizard was having an even worse time of it. His Master had assigned him with the task of getting the Potter annoyance to a creepy graveyard on the evening of June twenty-fourth, and said annoyance was putting a right wrinkle in his carefully thought out plans. 

Enter the boy, give him a bunch of hints so he’d stay alive and in contention, make sure no one else got to the portkeyed cup first, and his Master would take care of the rest — namely, murdering the boy in cold blood, because what else was a evil tyrant supposed to do? The problem was, the only one of those that’d succeeded so far was Harry staying alive. As for the important one, having Harry in strong contention, that one was right out of the water. He was 80, 72, and 70 points behind the other three competitors, which even at a mere minute per point behind, Harry wouldn’t be starting until over an hour after the next to last competitor. Sure, the judges were probably going to make up their own rules and have him start like fifteen minutes after third place, but even that would still be completely useless if Harry did like he had in the first two tasks, and just walked a step into the hedge maze and sat down, pulling out a book to read until one of the other contestants had found the Cup.

Ever since the first task when Harry had pulled that trick against the dragon, he’d been trying to come up with some alternative to get Harry to the graveyard unsuspiciously (like a boy disappearing was exactly unsuspicious when the boy’s headmaster immediately jumped to Master every time anything went wrong), but so far he’d come up empty. He and his Master’s perfect, foolproof plan hadn’t counted on Harry not caring about winning after he’d magnanimously been entered.

It looked like it was time for some drastic action to save the situation — now just to figure out what the hell that was.

* * *

Three and a half weeks before the final task, Harry was sleeping through another boiling Divination class, when he had a dream.

Which in and of itself wasn’t particularly odd, as he usually had dreams when he slept through Divination, which was quite often, but this one was more of a vision than a dream, strictly speaking. For one, it made sense, and for another, he remembered all of it after he woke up with his head feeling like it’d split in two. Everyone in class had of course crowded around him when he fell out of his chair (because Heaven forbid someone need a little space), and Trelawney was babbling on about how it was all because of her and her room, or something like that, but all Harry was interested in was getting out of there.

Both the Hermione in his mind the night of, and the real Hermione when he’d finally told her and Ron about his nightmare a few days later back during the summer, had told him exactly what to do if his scar hurt him again, and for once he was going to follow her always good advice immediately (instead of trying to solve everything by himself first like normal) — he was going to go tell Dumbledore.

He made it to the gargoyle, when he suddenly realized he didn't have a clue what the password was. He tried the one from two years ago with no success, before listing every magical sweet he could think of, before finally landing on 'cockroach cluster’, and the gargoyle stepped aside. At the top of the spiraling staircase, he knocked hesitantly on the polished oak door with the brass door knocker, where he was quickly bid entrance the headmaster.

The room was empty besides Dumbledore and his pet phoenix Fawkes, and Dumbledore motioned for Harry to take the seat across from where he was sitting behind his desk. As Harry sat down, Dumbledore gave him a swift, searching look, before saying, “So what can I do for you today?”

Harry launched into everything he’d seen in his dream, in as much detail as he could possibly remember. Dumbledore asked him a few questions, including whether he’d had any more instances of his scar hurting that year besides right then and over the summer, before walking over to the cabinet on the other side of his office, pulling out a shallow stone basin.

As he placed it in the center of his desk, he told Harry, “This is a pensieve. It stores one’s thoughts, so one can examine them at one's leisure. It is quite useful for when your brain starts getting too full, and it makes it easier to spot patterns and links.”

Then he started pacing, occasionally drawing memories out of his brain and placing them in the basin, along with answering Harry’s questions about his scar, and why it might be hurting. He eventually bid Harry goodbye, but not before wishing him best of luck in the third task, clearly still not having accepted that Harry wasn’t trying, and not even mentioning Harry’s absence at the Third Task reveal party, making Harry wonder if Professor McGonagall had never even told Dumbledore that he hadn’t gone, and Dumbledore hadn’t heard it even from some other source.

Back down in the main hallway, Harry immediately rushed off to find Hermione, catching up with her just before the Grand Staircase leading down to the Great Hall and supper. Pulling her into a broom closet, he told her everything he’d seen in his dream, and everything Dumbledore had told him in his office.

“Good of you to go to Dumbledore immediately,” praised Hermione once she’d heard everything. “If anyone can do anything about what you saw, it’ll be him.”

But as there really wasn’t anything else to be said, and certainly nothing more they could do about anything now that Dumbledore had been informed, they exited the broom closet and headed down the final staircase for supper, pushing it to the back of their minds.


	11. An Important Conversation

At long last, the morning of the final day of exams arrived.

It also happened to be the morning of the third task, but that was far less important to Harry. Despite not having to take his final exams as way of being champion, Hermione had convinced him that since he wasn’t actually doing anything for the tasks, and his scores on his exams wouldn’t matter anyway, that he should still take them to see how much he’d learned over the course of the year. So with minimal grumbling, he’d finally agreed to. But now it was finally the last day of exams, and he only had two left to take (the first being History of Magic, which he was pretty sure passing meant simply writing _something_ down on at least three-quarters of the questions, since there was no way anyone besides Hermione could actually remember enough in between being put to sleep by Binns’ droning to correctly answer more than a tenth of the questions, being generous), and he’d be free for the summer.

Soon after they sat down for breakfast, Hermione’s daily issue of the Prophet arrived. She quickly skimmed through it, but like the mornings of the other two tasks, there was nothing written about there being a task that day, despite the fact this tournament was supposed to be a really big deal. Of course Rita would have an article in the following morning’s issue, hopefully actually about whoever won, and not an entire article about the fact Harry didn’t, but for some reason the Prophet seemed to have no interest in letting its readers know the day of the tasks that they were going on.

Harry and Hermione were just standing up to head to their History of Magic final, when Professor McGonagall came hurrying up to them. "Potter, the champions are congregating in the chamber off the Hall after breakfast."

“But the task isn’t until dusk this evening, and they’ve already told the champions what they’re supposed to be doing, right?” said Harry. “Why do they need the champions plus me now?”

“I am aware of the time, Potter,” Professor McGonagall replied crisply. "The champions' families are invited to watch the final task, you know.”

Harry gave Hermione a sideways glance wondering if she had any clue that the champions’ families were invited, because he certainly hadn’t been told that, as Professor McGonagall continued on, "This is simply a chance for you to greet them."

As she turned to walk off, Harry quickly said, "You must be mistaken, Professor. There’s no way the Dursleys agreed to come. Anyway, I have an exam to get to.”

“You are exempt from exams,” replied McGonagall coldly, “and I expect you to be there.”

As the older woman turned and strode off before he could say anything else, Harry looked back over at Hermione.

“It’s not _my_ parents, or they would have told me, and it's obviously not the Dursleys. As to the real question — no. It can’t be considered competing.”

So Harry gave her a nod and they walked up to Binns’ classroom together, to try to stay awake long enough to scribble almost meaningful words in an almost meaningful combination about a wizarding past that most adult wizards either hadn’t learned about or hadn’t learned anything from.

Meanwhile, in the chamber off the Hall, Professor McGonagall, Mrs Weasley, and Bill were standing around, twiddling their thumbs. The three champions were all chatting amicably with their parents, but these three were all alone. Professor McGonagall had even sent Cedric back out into the Great Hall to tell Harry to get his butt in there (though in much more professional words), but the Hogwarts champion had returned saying Harry wasn’t in the Great Hall anymore.

As the three champions and their families started to wander out of the chamber, Mrs Weasley finally demanded, “Well?! Where is he?”

Professor McGonagall growled. “I don’t know. I told him to come in here, but he said something about his exams. Which is nonsense, because he’s exempt from his exams being a champion.”

They continued waiting for several more minutes in irritable silence, until finally all three of the other families had completely left the room, their champions showing their families around the castle.

Turning to Mrs Weasley again, Professor McGonagall said, “I think it is fairly clear Mister Potter will not be coming. I suppose the two of you can wander around the castle grounds, and catch him at lunch.”

Grudgingly, Mrs Weasley nodded her head and headed out to the grounds, sour not to have been able to claim her prize yet. Bill followed out behind her, still wondering why they hadn’t just come that evening, since they weren’t Harry’s family and therefore really shouldn’t be there early.

Mrs Weasley led them on a lap around the castle, but made sure they were back in the Great Hall extremely early, so she couldn’t possibly miss Harry when he came in for lunch. In fact, they had been sitting there for over an hour before Harry and Hermione came skipping down the marble steps of the Grand Staircase, only one more exam standing between them and eternal freedom (or September first, whichever came earlier).

But as soon as Hermione stepped through the door leading into the Great Hall, a half step ahead of Harry, she suddenly turned around and grabbed his arm and pulled them right back out from whence they’d come.

Pulling him towards the door leading down to the Hufflepuffs, she whispered, “I think we might want to get lunch straight from the kitchens today.”

“Sure, but why?” replied Harry curiously.

“I think I know who they invited instead of your family like Professor McGonagall implied they were obligated to,” answered Hermione. “That, or Mrs Weasley and Bill got lost and wandered in by accident, which I for one am highly doubtful of. And it also means that apparently no one has figured out yet that you and Ron aren’t friends anymore, if they thought inviting Ron’s family made any sense."

“Ah,” replied Harry, before adding a few seconds later, “Want to take lunch up to the Owlery Tower? There’s a nice little landing on the outside we could eat on that has a nice view of everything."

“Sounds fun.”

~HP~

Twenty minutes later found Harry and Hermione atop the Owlery Tower, enjoying a splendid picnic free of any mollycoddling, that Dobby and the rest of the house elves had put together for them.

“Have we actually made it all the way to the day of the task without someone or something telling you what the task is going to be?” asked Hermione as she took a bite of her sandwich.

“You know, we have,” replied Harry, realizing that it was the first time he didn’t know the upcoming task. “And this is the one they directly told the champions what it would be.”

“Curious about what they’ll be facing?” asked Hermione as she reached over and stole one of his chips.

“A little, but not enough to ask anyone,” answered Harry, retaliating by reaching over and stealing one of Hermione’s chips — or trying to, at least, as she slapped his hand away before he could successfully nip anything. “I’m plenty content to learn tonight with the rest of the school."

They ate in silence for a while longer, before Hermione sighed. “I’m going to miss getting to spend all this time with you over the summer."

“So will I, so will I,” replied Harry softly, moving his hand slightly to bump up lightly against hers. After a few seconds thought, he asked, “Is there any chance you could come visit me occasionally over the summer? I know my relatives won’t want me in the house, but I’m also not sure they’d like me being so far out of their sight as coming to visit you would be. Keep your enemies close but out of your hair, or something like that.”

Hermione laughed. “Pretty sure that’s not how that saying goes. Unfortunately, I’m not sure my mum would like me traveling that far on my own, either. Unless….”

Here she paused, clearly deep in thought. After a while, Harry had to prod her to continue.

“Unless what?” he asked quietly but curiously.

She looked back over at him from where she’d been staring off into space. “Well, there is _one_ way I think she might be more willing to let me come visit — and that's if she thought we were dating. Admittedly, that would make my dad _less_ excited about the idea, but he likes you as my friend after everything I’ve told him about you over the years, so I think he could be convinced to be reasonable about you being my boyfriend as well.”

By the end she'd adapted a far away look again, looking at Harry with a slightly cocked head, her mind clearly miles away, before her head suddenly snapped back straight up, and she quickly said, “If you _wanted_ to be my boyfriend, that is!"

Before Hermione could work herself into a tizzy, Harry quickly slid his hand entirely over hers and said, “Relax, Hermione, relax. If anyone’s to be questioning whether the other would be willing to be their significant other, it should be me, not you. You’re the brightest, smartest, funniest, most amazing, prettiest witch here, and I’m just _me_. Nobody Harry, who no one would even know existed if I hadn’t somehow stopped Voldemort when I was a baby. If anyone doesn’t want this, it would be you, not me.

“But that being said, I don’t really know anything about dating — the Dursleys certainly didn't give me a crash course on girls. Pretty sure they were hoping I’d never procreate and spread my ‘abnormalities’ to anyone else. But what I can say is, I’ve really enjoyed all the time we’ve spent together, and I’m certainly not looking forward to not seeing you for even a month, or however long it will be this year before the powers that be will let me see you again — although with the Weasleys out of the picture, they might not even try to let us see each other — so if you’re willing to have a boyfriend who doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be doing, then I’d be happy to be your boyfriend, and try my hardest to be a good one.”

“Harry! You’re the Boy-Who-Lived!” exclaimed Hermione as soon as he was done. "You could have any girl in the castle you wanted, and we _both_ know I’m not even the closest to being the prettiest, so there’s no reason to try to flatter me. Anyway, I was to one who suggested this all to you.”

“Agree to disagree,” mumbled Harry, before replying clearly, “But that’s my point! The Boy-Who-Lived, triwizard champion, might be able to have any girl he wants, if they weren’t too busy shunning him for being a parseltongue, or for entering himself into the tournament, or for whatever the shun Harry Potter du jour is, but none of them would go out with Harry, the spectacled boy with clothes way too big for him who’s relatives hate him and never had any friends until coming to Hogwarts, and still only has one really close friend, now that the other one he had for the first three years abandoned him because he's jealous. You’re the only girl who’s willing to date _that_ boy, and it’s just because you don’t want me to have to be alone over the summer and that’s the only way to do it.”

The last sentence Harry’s voice had grown self-depreciating, and there were several seconds of silence before it was broken by Hermione.

“ _No it’s not_ ,” she whispered so quietly that Harry wasn’t sure if he'd really caught it, as she stared down at her lap.

Harry gave her a confused, questioning look, even though she wasn’t looking at him, hoping she would repeat herself without him having to ask.

“I’m not just doing it because I don’t want you to be alone,” she repeated quietly after a second, but loudly enough that Harry could clearly hear her this time, while still not looking up from her hands. “This isn’t the first time I’ve thought about it over the past few months, I just didn’t think you would see me like that — I’m just the bossy, bushy-haired, know-it-all, bookworm with too large front teeth that you go to for friendship and help with your homework and to solve whatever problem you’re facing that year, not the famous, pretty girl you could spend the rest of your life with.”

Harry knew his best friend had trouble seeing herself the way he did, that she didn’t realize, or at least wouldn’t admit, how important she was to him and how much he needed her for more than just her smarts and ability to save him, but this was going too far. So reaching over and placing his fingers beneath her chin, he lifted up to make her look him in the eyes.

“I already told you you’re the prettiest girl here in my eyes, and I meant it,” replied Harry earnestly and sincerely, trying to convey everything she meant to him. “And if I never looked at you in a romantic way before, it’s because it’s just not something I think about. I’ve never looked at any other girl in the castle romantically, either. Like I said before, my relatives certainly never encouraged me to find a girl and settle down. So dating, marriage, looking for a girl I’d want to spend the rest of my life with — they just aren’t things I’ve spent much time thinking about. Besides generally being in fear for my life half the year and being isolated at my relatives another quarter, neither of which are exactly conducive for longterm relationships.

"But if there ever was a girl I could see myself being with, it would definitely be you. The smart, amazing, beautiful witch who’s never wavered from my side or stopped caring about me and trying to save me, even if I refused see it at the time and had turned my back on her. And now that you’ve started me thinking about that kind of thing, I can’t believe I never saw it before. So I would be _honored_ to be your boyfriend, and be able to call you my girlfriend.”

At a complete loss for words, Hermione did the only thing she had left, and launched herself at him, engulfing him in the tightest hug she’d ever given him. And if they ended up with Harry on his back, and Hermione lying flat on top of him because she’d knocked him down with how hard she’d flung herself at him, crying silently into the crook of his neck, who could hold it against her?

They remained like that for a long time, Harry hugging her back as she eventually drifted from crying tears of joy and love to simply enjoying him holding her like that and nearly falling asleep in his warm embrace, before Harry suddenly remembered they did have certain obligations on the rest of their day — or at least Hermione did.

“Uh, Hermione?” he said hesitantly, not wanting to make her move if he didn’t have to. “We do still have another exam this afternoon. We might should see what time it is.”

Hermione jerked up into a sitting position, staring at him in horror.

Then glancing at her watch, she exclaimed, “We’re late! We have to run, but we can just barely make it there in time!”

They scrambled to their feet, leaving the remains of their picnic for the house elves to clean up, and sprinted down through the halls towards the Transfiguration classroom. When they came skidding to a halt in front of the oak door, Harry realized it wasn’t even open yet, and there were still several of their classmates missing. He was about to lean over and whisper into her ear that they weren’t actually late, and hadn’t needed to run quite that fast, when he remembered anything later than being the fifth person in line to head into a class was late for her, and wisely kept his mouth shut.

Less than a minute later, Professor McGonagall opened the door and let them all file in, momentarily not noticing that Harry was amongst the pupils slowly death marching into her classroom (the bookworm being the obvious exception, as she was more bouncing than trudging). But once they’d all settled into their seats, and she’d started walking around handing out their exams, she finally noticed him.

“Mister Potter!” she exclaimed sternly. “You’re not supposed to be here! You’re supposed to be downstairs with your family before the third task this evening. And speaking of which, where were you after breakfast?”

“Taking my History of Magic exam,” answered Harry like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Just like I’m now here to take my Transfiguration final.”

“You are exempt from finals, Mister Potter. You are not allowed to be here,” replied Professor McGonagall. “Go meet your family, they should still be in the Great Hall.”

“Sorry Professor, but I’m paying to go to school here to learn, not to waste an afternoon wandering around the castle while final exams are being given. And whoever _is_ down, it certainly _isn’t_ my family.”

And with that, he picked up his quill and waited expectantly on her to hand him his exam, as Professor McGonagall stared down at him in complete disbelief. Several seconds later, by which point the entire classroom was staring at their teacher not giving one of her students a test, she finally relented that he clearly wasn’t going anywhere even if she didn’t give him a test, and set one down on his desk before quickly moving on the everyone else.


	12. 3rd Task

A few hours later, Harry and Hermione entered the Great Hall for supper, substantially later than they normally did.

But Hermione had thought that if they got there after more people had already seated themselves, and when more people were entering, in all the general commotion they could find seats away from the Weasleys, in between other Gryffindors so that the Weasleys couldn’t try to move next to them, and they wouldn’t have to listen to Mrs Weasley mollycoddle Harry the entire meal.

Fortunately her plan succeeded, and they were able to slip in and find two empty seats between some first and seventh years, across from a giggling gaggle of gossiping girls who were more than happy to tell the Gryffindor champion absolutely everything he had no interest whatsoever in knowing about the rumors floating through the castle. But at least none of them were about him or Hermione, so he could live with that, especially as none of them seemed to mind in the least when he just tuned them out and carried on a conversation with Hermione about their finals — which really just meant nodding and making appropriate agreeing sounds, and occasionally asking a question that included the name of one of their classes, while Hermione handled all the actual talking.

When the enchanted ceiling had finally become dusky, and everyone’s bellies had finally become stuffed, Dumbledore stood up. "Ladies and gentlemen, in five minutes' time, I will be asking you to make your way down to the Quidditch field for the third and final task of the Triwizard Tournament. Will the champions please follow Mr. Bagman down to the stadium now.”

Harry stood up, and to his slight surprise, so did Hermione next to him. If anyone else found it odd, no one said anything as the two of them walked down the row to the great oak doors of the entrance of the Great Hall, the three champions arriving at the same time. The five of them followed Ludo out through the entrance hall, Harry and Hermione falling back slightly to walk hand in hand behind the others.

“So something Quidditch related?” whispered Harry in Hermione’s ear as they walked out of the castle into the warm summer’s evening. “That seems like an unfair advantage to Krum, and slightly to Cedric.”

“I have a feeling it’s something different,” whispered Hermione back. “That’s just too obvious for the organizers, and would be a disadvantage to any champion that didn’t play Quidditch.”

Arriving at the Quidditch pitch, they found it to be blocked by a giant twenty-foot tall hedge, with just a small gap in it that clearly served as an entrance. As they couldn’t see anything more than tall hedge stretching all the way across the field, they still couldn’t tell what the actual task would be, but two feet into the entrance looked like a nice spot to Harry to settle down at to read his book, until the judges finally gave up and let him quit.

As the three champions gathered around Ludo for the last minute instructions, Hermione pulled Harry into the slight shadows of the wall beneath the stands, and slid her hand around the back of his neck, and pulled him to her for a light, chaste kiss on the lips.

“Good luck, Harry,” she whispered as she pulled away. “Now go join them, before they come looking for you.”

She gave him a slight nudge towards where the others were, as she headed up to the stands to get a seat as close to the entrance as she could.

Harry had just joined the champions when Hagrid, Professor Moody, Professor McGonagall, and Professor Flitwick all walked up, and McGonagall said to them, "We are going to be patrolling the outside of the maze. If you get into difficulty, and wish to be rescued, send red sparks into the air, and one of us will come and get you, do you understand?”

They all nodded their understanding, Harry’s mind turning. All he had to do was step inside the maze, which was apparently what the giant hedge was part of, send up red sparks to be rescued, and he’d be free from this tournament forever and could join Hermione in the stands to watch. Although exactly what they’d be watching he wasn’t quite sure, as he had a feeling that even from the high vantage point of the Quidditch stands, they wouldn’t be able to see down between twenty-foot hedges.

As Bagman sent the patrollers off to patrol and turned to address the crowd, Mad-Eye pulled Harry to the side slightly in the shadows.

“Put this around your neck. It’ll give you good luck, and protect you should something go wrong,” he growled, stuffing something into Harry’s hand before stumping off to his post.

Harry looked down at the rather plain-looking small stone on a silver chain, and while he highly doubted he was at any risk just stepping into the maze before sending up sparks, he put it around his neck anyway to make the crazy old ex-auror happy, stuffing it underneath his robes.

Ludo soon sent in Krum, the points leader, followed by Cedric eight minutes later. Two minutes after that he sent Fleur in, before pulling Harry to the side.

“Ten minutes, and I’ll send you in.”

As he and Hermione had expected, they weren’t waiting nearly as long to send him in as they should have based on the points, as being seventy points behind Fleur he shouldn’t technically have been sent in until an hour and ten minutes after her, but he didn’t really care. It’s not like he’d be doing anything more than stepping in and giving up anyway, so who cared how much they calvinballed the rules.

Ten minutes finally passing, Ludo blew his whistle for the fourth time, and Harry stepped into the maze. As soon as he crossed the threshold the world went eerily silent, but Harry barely noticed this as he stuck his wand up and conjured red sparks, indicating that he was in dire need of rescuing from this insufferable tournament he hadn’t entered himself into. To say that Professor McGonagall wasn’t exactly happy looking when she walked up twenty seconds later would have been a gross understatement, but fortunately Professor Flitwick walked up behind her before McGonagall had time to do more than glare at him sternly, and he asked, “You wish to be rescued, and forfeit your chance at winning?”

“Yes, please,” replied Harry, nodding politely at the Charms teacher.

Flitwick stepped into the maze, his single step taking him as far in as Harry had made it, before saying, “Then come along with me. I don’t think it’s really necessary for us to apparate out this close to the entrance.”

A second later he and Harry stepped out of the maze, safe and sound, and Flitwick continued, “You can go take a seat in the stands if you like.”

“Thank you, sir,” replied Harry with nod, before turning and heading up to where Hermione was sitting in the first row of the stands.

And sitting down next to her, squeezing her roommate Sally-Anne Perks over slightly so he’d have a spot to sit in, whispered, “Well, that was easy.”

Hermione grabbed his hand, squeezing it tightly, resting her head against his shoulder.

They had been watching hedges grow for about fifteen minutes, when suddenly, out of the blue, completely unexpected, Harry felt a jerk somewhere behind his navel that he knew he’d felt once before, before it felt like his feet had left the floor of the stands and he was speeding forward through a howl of wind and color. The only thing he could feel for sure was Hermione’s hand gripped tightly in his own, before a second later they came crashing onto the ground, Hermione laying on top of him in much the same way they’d been at the top of the Owlery earlier that day. Harry had a feeling that wherever they were now wasn’t quite so pleasant.

Hermione quickly scrambled up, pulling her wand out and lighting it as she looked around, ever alert. As soon as Harry could stand up too and light his wand, he found that they were in a creepy graveyard, shadows all around them.

“What the hell was that?” he whispered harshly, because this was clearly the kind of place one whispered in.

“Portkey,” replied Hermione in a sharp whisper of her own. “Remember going to the World Cup? Now keep your wand up, something’s clearly very wrong here.”

“Slight understatement,” mumbled Harry, his wand already up and ready for action — he wasn’t stupid, after all.

They looked around, Harry having the strange feeling they were being watched, before all of a sudden Hermione shouted out, "Who are you? Reveal yourself!”

Apparently she’d had the same feeling.

Hermione had pointed her wand towards a particularly dense set of shadows, and a second later, Harry saw a figure drawing nearer through those shadows, weaving its way through the headstones. Harry and Hermione both kept their wands trained at it, _Stupefy_ on their tongues ready to be shouted, along with numerous other spells lining up behind that one should they need them. The figure kept coming, cloak and shadows obscuring his face, and carrying something in his arms that looked to be either a baby or a similarly shaped bundle of robes.

The figure finally came to a stop six feet from where Harry and Hermione had landed, now more like fifteen feet away from them as they’d slowly backed up as he kept coming towards them. Harry just had time to see the figure start to raise the corner of one of the blankets when without warning his scar exploded in pain, and he fell to the ground, wand slipping from between his fingers.

That was all the provocation Hermione needed, and she shouted, “ _Stupefy!_ " And then for good measure, she followed it up with “ _Expelliarmus!_ ” and “ _Petrificus Totalus!_ ”

Still cautiously glancing around them, she finally bent down to check on Harry, and make sure he was okay now that the only visible threat had been neutralized. She found him still clutching his scar, but otherwise safe and unharmed.

Helping him stand back up, she said, “I thought your scar only hurt when Voldemort was physically near you or feeling a particularly strong surge of hatred.”

Harry nodded, quickly relighting his wand. “Yeah, and I have the worst suspicion it’s not because he’s feeling grumpy — or at least not exclusively because of that, I guess I should say.”

They slowly made their way over to where the figure lay sprawled out on the ground, still constantly checking their surroundings. Suddenly, there was a rustling in the grass near them, and they both spun and shouted " _Stupefy!_ ” at the same time. They heard something tumble through the weeds a few feet, before everything returned eerily silent again.

“Which first?” asked Harry, back to a whisper.

“The unknown, but keep an eye out on the figure over there,” whispered back Hermione.

It only took them a few minutes of searching to find the gigantic snake that had been making the noise, and was now lying there stunned and unconscious.

“Snakes? Creepy graveyards? Why can’t evil people ever have their lairs in brightly lit places with nice, friendly servants?” asked Harry rhetorically as they drug the snake by its tail over to the figure and blankets.

“Now, now, would that be as much fun?” teased Hermione as they dropped snake a few feet away from the body.

“Fun isn’t particularly high on my list of priorities when I’m worried about being killed,” retorted Harry playfully.

“Well let’s try to avoid the dying thing today, why don’t we?” replied Hermione cheerfully as she reached out her toe to push the figure’s cloak away from his head, just to gasp as soon as she did.

Looking down, Harry didn’t have to ask why. For lying there was their old friend Peter Pettigrew, the rat. A rat quite literally, along with figuratively.

“What was it the old fraud said last year?” asked Hermione reluctantly. “Because I’m afraid I know exactly why your scar hurt, and what’s underneath those blankets.”

“Something about Voldemort’s servant joining his master, and with his aid Voldemort rising again,” answered Harry. He paused a second, before adding, “We _actually_ _have_ Voldemort’s apparently helpless body two feet away from us, don’t we?”

"It’s the most logical conclusion,” replied Hermione, nodding her head with a sigh. “But unfortunately we need to check to make sure, and then figure out what the portkey that brought us here is so we can get back.” Pointing her wand at the blanket she gave an extra ‘Stupefy’ for good measure even though she was pretty sure she’d hit the blankets when she hit Pettigrew, before aiming her wand at the edge of the blanket. Before casting the spell, she said, “He’s stupefied, so hopefully your scar won’t hurt looking at it, but just be aware,” and then said, “ _Wingardium Leviosa_.”

The corner of the blanket lifted up, revealing a humanoid creature in a crouching position, the most revolting thing either of them had ever seen, and they’d both been within twenty feet of Snape. It had thin, feeble arms and legs, a hairless, scaly-looking, raw blood-reddish body, and a face that could only be described as snakelike. It suited the evil ex-tyrant well.

“I’d say that’s a Voldemort, wouldn’t you?” said Hermione, looking down at the thing in disgust.

“It needs taken back to the adults to be disposed of, no matter who it is,” replied Harry, “but I sure as God _hope_ it’s Voldemort, and there isn’t something else in the world that disgusting. Speaking of which, if we portkeyed here, what _is_ the portkey? Doesn’t the portkey come with?”

“Yes, it does, but no, I don’t know what it is. Did anyone hand you anything before the task, or anything? I mean, it had to have been touching your skin for it to take you when it activated,” answered Hermione.

“I can’t remem– Oh, wait! Yes! Mad-Eye handed me this necklace around my neck,” replied Harry, pulling it out from under his robes. “But the only part touching my skin would have been the chain. And it’s been against my skin this whole time, so why hasn’t it taken us back?”

“I’d guess the chain must be part of the portkey, and not just the stone,” replied Hermione. Grabbing his hand with her non-wand one, she added, “Let’s make sure we’re holding hands so we don’t get separated if I can figure out how to make it work.”

Looking around them at Wormtail, Voldemort’s blankets, and the snake, she continued, “And we’ve somehow got to figure out how to bring everyone along with us.”

“How strong is the touch connection of a portkey?” asked Harry. “If we put Wormtail's hand against Voldemort, and wrap the snake around the rat’s neck, and then one of us holds onto Wormtail’s ankle, would we all make it back?"

“Well, I certainly couldn’t pull my hand out of yours on the trip here, not that I tried,” replied Hermione, “So that should work.”

They set about arranging their would-be attackers, before Harry grabbed onto Wormtail’s ankle with his free hand so Hermione could work on the portkey.

All arranged, Hermione pointed her wand at the portkey around Harry’s neck, saying, “Here goes nothing, that probably won’t work,” before tapping the chain with the tip of her wand as she said, “Activate.”

To both their great surprises, and probably Wormtail, Voldemort, and the snake’s as well had they been awake (all three) or capable of higher thinking (the third), their insides were suddenly removed through their navels, and they felt like Dorthy leaving Kansas. A second later they slammed back into the ground, Harry and Hermione immediately jumping up with wands at the ready, just in case they’d portkeyed somewhere other than back to the maze.

But fortunately they hadn’t, so they quickly trained their wands on the prisoners, and waited for the patrollers to come hurrying over. As they let themselves take their surroundings in more thoroughly now that they appeared to be safe, Harry and Hermione both noticed that their absence hadn’t been missed, as there was the general chaos going on that one might expect from two people suddenly and unexplainably disappearing. Professors McGonagall, Flitwick, and Hagrid all came running up, as did Dumbledore and Bagman, and Fudge a few seconds later quite winded, but Mad-Eye was notably absent from the crowd, stumping away hurriedly in rather the opposite direction of the scene.

As soon as Dumbledore was near enough for Hermione to be able to talk to him relatively quietly, she quickly said, “Arrest Mad-Eye. He’s the one who gave Harry the portkey.” And turning to Harry, she added, “And take that damn thing off. We don’t need you suddenly whisked away again.”

Harry quickly yanked the thing off, tossing it to the ground away from him.

“Professor Moody?” said Professor McGonagall in disbelief, but Hagrid at least had the sense to lumber over to where Mad-Eye was trying to subtly make his escape, the half-giant’s long strides easily overtaking the stumped ex-auror’s.

As he was doing that, Dumbledore went from staring at the bodies Harry and Hermione had brought back with them, to looking at the two students themselves.

“What happened?”

“Before the task, Mad-Eye gave me that necklace and said it would provide me good luck and protection. Not wanting to hurt his feelings, I put it on. Then once I was back in the stands with Hermione, it suddenly activated,” answered Harry, before looking over at Hermione to continue.

“We landed in a graveyard, saw someone coming towards us, Harry suddenly collapsed in pain so I shot stunning spells at the figure, since he seemed to be the only possible cause, before checking to make sure Harry was okay. Then as we were going to check out the body I’d stunned, we heard rustling in the grass and both stunned the snake. Making it to the body, we discovered it was Wormtail, which combined with Trelawney’s prophecy last year gave us the pretty good idea the thing in the blankets had to be Voldemort. So I stunned the blankets one more time to make sure, then lifted up the corner to confirm it was Voldemort. Then we arranged them like that so we could transport them, I tapped the portkey with the tip of my wand, and we arrived back here."

“But why would Professor Moody do that if he knew you could just tell on him?” asked Professor McGonagall before Dumbledore could say anything, still apparently stuck on the idea that it could have been Mad-Eye.

“Because Harry was never supposed to return, in which case Mad-Eye, or whoever has polyjuiced themselves to look like Mad-Eye, as I believe the case more likely is, never would have been detected,” answered Dumbledore solemnly, before looking back at Harry and Hermione. “But thanks to the quick thinking of these two, his, and Voldemort’s, plans were thwarted. Very good job you two.”

At that moment, there was a large commotion at the entrance to the maze, as Fleur suddenly popped into existence, holding the TriWizard Cup.

“Fleur’s won!” shouted someone in the crowd, and soon the entire crowd was chanting Fleur’s name, and generally celebrating her win.

Looking over at Professor Flitwick, Dumbledore quietly said, “Find Cedric and Krum and bring them out.” Turning to Professor McGonagall and Hagrid he added, “Take these prisoners up to the castle and to my office, and make sure they are well bound. I’ll deal with them later.” And finally looking at Harry and Hermione, he said, “Join Cedric and Krum when they come out.”

Then he turned and walked over to address the crowd, and officially announce Fleur as the winner of the TriWizard Cup.

By the time Dumbledore had announced that Fleur Delacour was this year’s TriWizard champion, Mrs Weasley had finally waddled her way out of the stands and down to where Harry and Hermione were standing, so she could rescue and comfort them from whatever horrors they must have gone through wherever they’d been taken away to. Or formerly standing, as it actually was, as Harry and Hermione had quickly moved to hide in the shadows behind Cedric and Krum as soon as they spotted Mrs Weasley inbound, having no desire to be mollycoddled or protected from things she thought they were too young for, after having just literally captured the most feared wizard of the past half century that very few adults had ever dared to even try to stand up against.

Mrs Weasley looked around in confusion, wondering where her babies had disappeared to, but by the time she finally spotted them, Dumbledore had dismissed everyone back up to the castle, and Harry and Hermione were able to disappear behind the crowds that were stampeding back up to the castle for a celebratory late night snack in the Great Hall — or at least as much stampeding as a couple hundred students crowded into a fairly small area could.

A few minutes later Harry and Hermione were walking slowly behind the masses with the three champions, listening to their epic tales of daring feats inside the maze, eventually making it into the Great Hall and all sitting together to be able to continue their exchange of braveries. But eventually they’d all talked out, and the party in the Great Hall was still raging, so Fleur turned to Harry and asked, “So what’d you do this task? Read again, like the first one?”

It wasn’t insulting, like those questions could have been with a different tone, just a genuine question as to how Harry had passed the time while the champions were making their way through the maze.

Harry gave a brief glance at Hermione, who shrugged her shoulders in a ’they should all hear about it soon, anyway, if the adults have any brains whatsoever’ kind of way, so he looked back at the champions and said, “Well, literally as soon as I stepped inside, I sent up red sparks to say I needed rescued, and then once rescued and allowed to leave the maze, I joined Hermione in the stands to watch. Which was all fine and dandy until fifteen minutes later when we were portkeyed away to a creepy graveyard, where Hermione stunned Voldemort, Voldemort’s pet snake, and the real killer in the Sirius Black mass murder of thirteen years ago. Then we portkeyed back, just a few minutes before you won.”

Predictably, the three champions sat there gaping at the pair for several seconds, before all at once clamoring for details, which Harry and Hermione readily gave them. By the time the couple had finished telling their tale, and answering all the ensuing questions, Dumbledore finally stood up to call an end to the celebrations for the night, and usher everyone off to their beds, with the reminder that there was a class-free week and a half to continue their celebrations before everyone left for the summer.

Harry and Hermione were amongst the last to leave the Great Hall, wishing the other three champions goodnight, and so by the time they made it up to the hallway outside the Gryffindor portrait, they were all alone. So before they could reach the Fat Lady’s portrait, Hermione pulled Harry into the last available broom closet, kissing him on the lips as soon as the door was closed behind them.

Harry readily responded, enjoying his first snog.

Eventually the need for oxygen broke them apart, so Harry said, “What was that for? Not that I’m complaining, of course.”

“For surviving the tournament; for capturing Voldemort and his posse; just because you’re my boyfriend so I can now…” replied Hermione with a shrug, before adding cheekily, “Does it really matter, or would you rather just kiss me again?”

Harry didn’t bother responding, instead just attaching his lips to hers again. Harry didn’t know how long they kissed for before Hermione, her forehead pressed against his, breaths mingling in the closeness, reluctantly said, “We should probably get to bed. It’s got to be getting late.”

Harry nodded just as reluctantly, nearly bumping his nose against hers in the process. “Sadly, yes. But promise we can do this again tomorrow? I think I might be becoming addicted to your lips already.”

Hermione laughed. “Absolutely. But tomorrow I think we can probably find somewhere by the lake, out of sight of the castle and grounds.”

“Deal,” said Harry, finally straightening up, so they could head down the hall towards the Gryffindor common room, and their respective beds.


	13. Going Home

Over the remaining week and a half before the Hogwarts Express, Harry and Hermione spent much of their free time exploring each other’s lips.

It was the first time either of them had dated, or kissed, and they were excited to learn as much about it as they could, and try it out as much as they could, before only being able to see each other every so often over the summer. They also tried it in every different place they could think of around the castle where they wouldn’t be caught by teachers or other students (as they felt the Potter rumor mill didn’t need that added to it, not yet anyway — that could wait for the fall), to see if location made any difference in what it felt like. Or at least, that was the excuse Hermione offered when she proposed the idea — that it was simply intellectual curiosity, a theory in need of testing — but they both knew it was just an excuse to snog more, and neither of them cared.

The Saturday after the third task, Dumbledore called for an impromptu feast, under the pretense of celebrating the successful culmination of the first TriWizard Cup in over a century. But as soon as he stood up and started talking after everyone had finished eating, it quickly became apparent that he had another reason for wanting everyone together so he could speak.

“As many of you may have heard already, when Mister Potter and Miss Granger were portkeyed away from stands Tuesday night, they were transported to where Voldemort had been hiding out in his weakened, but humanoid form. Thanks to their quick thinking and defensive use of magic, they were able to subdue Voldemort, his helper, and his snake, and bring them back to the castle. They were also able to report that Professor Moody was not really Professor Moody, but rather Bartemius Crouch Junior, long thought to have died in Azkaban many years ago.

“And speaking of people long thought dead, Voldemort’s helper turned out to be none other than Peter Pettigrew, long thought to have been murdered by Sirius Black when Sirius allegedly killed twelve muggles and Mister Pettigrew thirteen years ago. However, it turns out that it was actually Pettigrew who committed that mass murder, and then escaped by turning into his unregistered animagus rat form.

"All four of these are now in Magical Law Enforcement’s custody, with trials impending for the two humans and whatever Voldemort is now. Of which, Peter Pettigrew’s trial will also serve to free Sirius Black and clear his name from the charges levied against him thirteen years ago that sent him to Azkaban without trial.

“Now, many in the Ministry would not want me to be telling you all this, and neither would many of your parents. But I believe that it is important for everyone to be aware of the threats facing us all, especially as it _was_ two students who were able to bring these criminals to justice. So let this be a reminder that even the youngest amongst us can make the biggest differences. And since this will probably not be the end of Voldemort, and certainly not of the evil he espoused, as both the fake Mad-Eye reminded you all year, and the real one will certainly agree — _Constant Vigilance_!”

Many of those in the room were staring in shock at the headmaster by the time he’d finished, but far more had already heard that Harry and Hermione had brought back He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, from one source or another. Several people had asked Harry and Hermione directly what had happened, and who they’d brought back with them when they returned. Other students had asked the handful of students whose parents worked in the Magical Law Enforcement office, or otherwise had an ear on what was going on, what they’d heard from home. But whoever they’d heard it from, most students already knew at least some of the information Dumbledore had just told them, and many knew even more than what he'd told them.

Therefore, the speech received more nodding heads and resigned looks than gasps and panicked whispers and looks of disbelief and horror. And those who did react that way quickly stopped as they realized no one else was doing that, and had apparently already heard this news, turning instead to look at _them_ in disbelief. The teachers also seemed rather surprised that there really wasn’t much surprise amongst the student body at this life-changing announcement from Dumbledore.

Once Dumbledore sat back down, however, there was much whispering amongst the crowd, everyone comparing notes with their neighbor between what Dumbledore had just told them, and everything they’d already heard. As for Harry and Hermione, they were merely discussing their slight surprise that Dumbledore had decided to share so much the entire school — he hadn’t explained this much after Harry had defeated the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets two years earlier. They, of course, had been called into the headmaster's office the day after the third task to debrief him on everything that had happened in the graveyard the night before, though they hadn’t really learned anything new from their discussion with him that night.

It was also the first time they’d heard about Sirius finally getting a proper trial, or rather Pettigrew’s trial overturning the lack of a trial Sirius had received thirteen years earlier. So as everyone else was whispering about the capture of Voldemort and company, Harry and Hermione were speculating on when Sirius would be declared free, and if it occurred over the upcoming summer, whether the powers that be would allow Harry to finally go live with his godfather, and escape the Dursleys forever.

~HP~

Midway through the final week before the Hogwarts Express would return them all home, Harry and Hermione were relaxing by the Black Lake, when Fleur approached them.

“Hi Harry, Hermione,” the Veela said brightly as she walked up to them.

“Hi Fleur,” replied Harry and Hermione in chorus, before Hermione added, “So what brings you to this lovely spot by the lake?”

“I wanted to offer you two half of my TriWizard winnings for capturing Voldemort and his two followers,” answered Fleur. “It may not have been part of the tournament, but it was certainly far more important, and proved you were more than worthy to have competed in the tournament, regardless of your choice not to actually compete and not being the one to have your name come out, respectively. So you two deserve the winnings at least as much as I deserve it for completing three meaningless tasks slightly better or quicker than my fellow competitors."

“That’s really nice of you, Fleur, and we certainly appreciate the offer, but I _really_ don’t need the money, and you _are_ the one who earned it according to the rules,” replied Harry sincerely. "Of course, I can’t speak for Hermione, but—”

“I don’t need it either,” interjected Hermione quickly. “My parents are pretty well-to-do in the muggle world—"

But Fleur waved them both off. “I know ze Potters are extremely wealthy, so even if you only have access to a school vault until you're of age, I know you don’t _need_ it,” she said. “But ze truth is, neizer do I. Ze Delacour's aren’t Potter rich, but I don’t ‘ave any need for a zousand galleons, any more zan you do. So please, allow me to thank you for saving ze wizarding world yet again, and take it — buy your girlfriend something nice with it. If ‘Ermione _is_ your girlfriend, of course, I don’t mean to be presumptuous.”

“She is,” replied Hermione with a smile. “We officially started dating the afternoon before the third task, but we’ve kind of been dating without realizing it ever since Harry’s name came out of the goblet and we started spending all our time together because Harry’s other friend called him a liar and refused to believe that Harry hadn’t entered himself."

“Zat redheaded Ronald fellow ‘oo was your ‘ostage in ze second task?” asked Fleur, and Harry and Hermione nodded. “ ‘E seemed like a real git when you two ‘ad words after ze task."

“He’s decent enough when he’s not being lazy, or jealous of everyone with any bit of popularity, or arguing with Hermione, but there’s just too many of those moments to ignore,” replied Harry, “And it took Hermione pointing it out to me after me being friends with him for three and a half years for me to finally see it. But he was the first person to ever want to be friends with me, so I ignored his behavior for the longest time, too close to see it clearly and subconsciously feeling like I owed him something in return for being friends with me when no one else would.

“And I would consider being friends with him again if he would genuinely and sincerely apologize to Hermione, without having to be asked by one of us to do so, for how he treated her for three plus years, and start treating her respectfully going forward. And ideally stop being so lazy with his homework and certainly stop expecting Hermione to do it for him. But given the fact I can’t remember ever hearing him apologize to anyone for anything, I have my doubts that it will ever happen."

“It often takes us ze longest to realize ze faults of those closest to us,” responded Fleur solemnly, nodding her head. “And when we finally do, it is ze hardest to leave zem.” She paused for a second, before adding with a grin, “But it is even ‘arder to distract me from making you take ‘alf of ze TriWizard winnings."

Harry and Hermione groaned, but Harry did reach out and take the sack of galleons she held out to him, and gave a sincere, “Thank you.”

The three of them continued to chat a while longer, until finally heading up to the Great Hall for supper together.

~HP~

Finally, the day to take the Hogwarts Express back to London arrived.

Harry still wasn’t looking forward to being stuck at the Dursleys with little contact for at least several weeks, but between Hermione promising to come over and visit as often as her parents would allow her, and the hope that Sirius would legally be free before the end of summer and could come rescue him from his relatives, never to return, Harry’s summer was looking much more promising than it ever had before.

Boarding the train after the horseless carriage ride to the Hogsmeade station, Harry and Hermione found a compartment alone near the back of the train. Contrary to how they previously would have sat had they been the only two in the compartment, they sat side by side, Hermione half trying to fit herself into Harry’s seat, giving Crookshanks the entire bench across from them to himself. Not that that was the humans’ goal, of course, it just happened to work out that way for the kneazle as Hermione wanted to be as close to Harry as she could for as long as she could before they had to go to their separate homes for the summer. And Harry certainly wasn’t complaining about it.

The morning passed by quickly, until sometime after lunch the compartment door was abruptly slid open, and Harry and Hermione looked up to find Malfoy and company standing there glaring.

Without invitation, Draco sneered, "So you think you’re all special because you captured the Dark Lord and a couple of his followers. Saved the wizarding world once again. Well, it doesn’t matter. You've still picked the losing side, Potter! He may be locked up for now, but he’ll never stay that way. And when he’s back for real, it’ll be mudbloods like _her_ that are the first to go,” he finished, jerking his head towards Hermione.

“Ah, yes, because if I’d just befriended _you_ instead of Hermione first year, Voldemort would have let me join his motley crew instead of trying to kill me every year — _not_ ,” replied Harry dryly, his hand subtly sneaking into his pocket to close around his wand. He felt Hermione do the same where she was leaning up against him. "There was no winning side for me here, Draco, so stop trying to act all high and mighty. You’re just a piece of scum who’s name nobody would even know if you didn’t come from a rich family."

In a flash, wands were out and spells were shouted, the three Slytherins dropping like the paperweights they were only good for. A second later, the twins stepped over them and into the compartment, commenting on the unique results of combining different hexes, before challenging Harry and Hermione to a game of exploding snaps.

The four of them had been playing for several games when Harry looked up at the twins and asked, "What’s up, guys? You don’t seem your normal upbeat selves."

Both twins sighed, and George asked, “Remember how we made a bet with Ludo at the World Cup?”

“Yeah,” nodded Harry and Hermione.

“Well, he payed us in Leprechaun gold, so it all disappeared,” replied Fred.

“At first we thought it was a mistake, but after we finally pinned him down, he told us we were too young to be betting,” continued George.

“And when we tried to make him just give us our money back, he refused.”

“But in the end, we found out he’s in up to his neck with the goblins, and hasn’t got a knut to pay out to anyone.”

“But that was all your savings!” exclaimed Harry.

Fred and George nodded sadly.

Before anyone could say anything else, a brilliant idea popped into Hermione’s head. Leaning over, she quickly whispered it into Harry’s ear, his face lighting up as he heard her quite frankly genius idea. Jumping up, he scrambled around in his trunk until he found what he was looking for. Sitting back down, he held the sack of gold Fleur had given them out towards the twins.

“Fleur insisted we take half for capturing Voldemort, Pettigrew, and Crouch Junior. But neither of us have any use for it, and you clearly do, so take it. Start building that joke shop you’ve been talking about all year.”

“Harry, you’re mental. We can’t do that,” said Fred in an awed voice.

“Yes you can, and you will. Consider it an investment. Once you’re up and running, you can pay us back with interest, or give us a really small cut of your profits. It’s a thing muggles do,” replied Harry, tossing the sack into Fred’s lap.

“Please,” added Hermione. “You’re both brilliant, and you can make good use out of it. The world can always use more laughs, and we all know you’re not going to get any support at home, financial or emotional. Bagman may not pay up, but Harry and I are in a position where we can, and we both want to. So please.”

“You _are_ mental,” replied George, as he slowly reached down and picked up the sack Harry’d tossed in his lap. “Thank you.”

“This means more than you can possibly imagine,” added Fred.

The remainder of the journey passed quickly, Fred and George elaborating on at length about all the plans they had for their joke shop, until the train finally pulled into Kings Cross.

Harry and Hermione waited in the compartment until everyone else had deboarded the train, getting in a last-minute snog, and hoping Mrs Weasley would leave as soon as she had all her children, and not try to wait around for Harry as well. When they finally crossed through the magical barrier into the muggle world, holding hands, they thankfully found they were right, and the only two groups of people still waiting were Uncle Vernon and Hermione’s parents.

As they paused just outside the barrier, before heading to their respective families to leave, Hermione leaned over and gave Harry a quick peck on the cheek, whispering, “I’ll see you as soon as I can.”

~ The End ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know, everyone wants a sequel for what happens over the summer and the following year. You know what? I want one, too. But wanting one, and actually writing the darn thing, are very, very different. So yeah, I’m sure I’ll start writing it at some point, but I have so many other stories going on who knows if it’ll ever get written. So there. Phbbt.


End file.
